Harry Potter and the Game
by Concept101
Summary: With his life turned into a Game, Harry now has to raise a Phoenix, uncover the Founders' darkest secrets, deal with political manipulations and live through Hogwarts all while trying desperately to not swear too much.
1. Prologue-I:Sic Parvis Magna

**Hello and w** ** **elcome to Harry Potter and the Game.**** ** **This fic is** **heavily** **inspired by** **the _Korean webcomic The Gamer_ and ****Percy Jackson and the Game** **,** **with the authors' permission** **.** **Thanks** **to them** **for giving me their permission** **.**** **This story is split into Books. Each book contains one year of Hogwarts time.** **Thank you for picking this up. Sit back, relax, and e** **njoy!**

* * *

 **Book 1: Press Start**

* * *

Prologue:

Harry Potter was a brilliant runner. For all the running he did, he had to be.

Sometimes he would run from things like his Uncle and Aunt...their reprimands...their resentment...even their anger. Other times, he'd run from his _freakishness_ , for whatever Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia said about him being a completely normal delinquent, the freakishness was always there, haunting him like creeping wisps of mist under his skin. Sometimes, it showed...sometimes turning someone's wig blue and sometimes closing a cut on Harry's hands in mere seconds. And even other times he'd run from the dreams that haunted his nights, bringing out flashes of memories of a red-haired woman and a sickly green light filling his vision. He'd throw his best shield up against all those problems; sarcasm, anger, dry wit; trying to slow them down.

And he'd run.

Harry Potter was a brilliant runner after all.

"C'mere Potter!"

Right now, he was getting in his fair share of practice running from his overstuffed pumpkin of a cousin Dudley 'Duddykins' Dursley, a rather obese boy who looked like he could drape his many flaps of stomach fat over his hips and never need to wear any pants again. Well, one could call it running, but it was more of a slow jogging, or perhaps even a lazy ambling. Considering the massive bulk that Dudley sported, the youngest of the Dursleys would have trouble outrunning a dead snail. Harry grinned at Dudley, taunting him, and took off running towards the park in the Surrey area.

It was there that he was caught in an ambush. Dudley's friend and Harry's co-tormentor Piers Polkiss was waiting for his victim near the park gates!

Harry, instead of panicking, dashed right towards Piers. Swiftly dodging the punch Piers threw at him, he rushed into the park and started running in earnest. If Dudley had brought Piers, then the rest of his gang would be nearby. And while Harry was fast, he wasn't fast enough to escape an all-out ambush by the entire Duddikins Army.

Sure enough, all but a few moments later, Malcolm, Redgie and the rest of the gang had him surrounded. Dudley jogged over to his caged prey, panting heavily.

"We...we got you now...Potter!" Dudley said in between heaving breaths.

They cracked their knuckles and prepared to pummel Harry with punches when suddenly, a familiar voice cracked across the near-empty playground.

"WHAT is going ON here?!"

Harry turned towards the direction of the voice and groaned when he recognized the source.

It was their Chemistry teacher, Ms. Roemmele. The tall and rather strict looking teacher was a master of reprimanding and punishing students, yet while in class, she spoke with a voice so devoid of enthusiasm that to Harry it seemed as if she had given up on life and like most teachers in the day's economy, was hoping for a quick and painless death. She would have been sad to look at, had she not been so _utterly_ terrifying.

"MISTER Dudley Dursley!" she snapped, and the little knot in Harry's stomach uncoiled a little. The she-devil wasn't here for him. Slowly, he shuffled along towards the nearest cover, a swing set, hoping to hide out the storm and leave unharmed.

"I come to your home for a teacher's visit," Ms. Roemmele continued, "Only to find that not only did you not inform your parents about my coming, but also that you're fooling around and hassling people in parks! And you Mr. Polkiss! Rest assured your parents will be getting a visit from me about this. The rest of you can count yourself in for that as well! Now scram!"

They all stood frozen on their spots.

"SCRAM!"

The entire gang disappeared from the park in seconds, running as fast as they could.

With the rest of her targets gone, she turned to look at Harry, who was slowly trying to get away unnoticed. "And you! Mr Potter! Come here!"

Harry sighed. His desperate attempt at what he assumed was a sideways moonwalk was all in vain. He sighed, before he walked over to her, "Ah...yes ma'am"

"Come," she said, surprising Harry with her quiet tone, "I will drop you off at your house."

A bit wary of what was to come, since teachers taking special notice of Harry had never quite ended well, he started walking towards Number 4 Privet Drive with the strict teacher walking by his side. Through the corner of his eyes, he caught her staring at his forehead. Harry's hand went up automatically and self-consciously brushed against his scar. Ms. Roemmele seemed to catch herself and looked away.

Perhaps she was wondering how he got such an oddly specific lightning bolt shaped scar, Harry thought.

"Have you prepared for the test on the historical and archaeological evidence of the origin of modern chemistry?" she asked after walking in silence for about five minutes.

"Er...no ma'am." he truthfully replied. He rarely studied for any test these days, since the Dursleys had a tendency to get pissy any time he outscored Dudley.

She set him with a piercing look. "I expect better of you Mr. Potter. Haven't you understood how important these so-called 'history lessons,' as your classmates have taken to calling them, are to your future education."

Harry shrugged, "I'm sorry Ms. Roemmele, but weren't we supposed to do the periodic table, last class? It's going to be in the finals and if I don't score well then Aunt Petunia won't be very happy about it."

Ms. Roemmele shook her head, and keeping her gaze on the street in front of her, spoke, "Exams aren't everything Mr. Potter. History teaches us many things. Roman paintings discovered in the 1600s tell us that people then believed in dragons and somehow had knowledge of reptilian biology that the Western World hadn't discovered till the late 1900s. People who believed in Alchemy, like the French Nicholas Flamel inspired most of the modern nuclear chemistry we see today in our lives. That is why we need to learn about these stories Mr. Potter-to understand where we come from, and what stories influenced the great people who built our world."

Harry stayed quiet, but it was fairly obvious to anyone watching that he wasn't so sure about that.

"But Ms. Roemmele," Harry said, gaining a little bit of confidence in his voice, "these are just stories. Fairy tales..."

"Don't be too sure Mr. Potter."

* * *

At that very moment, two entities, one male and one female entirely undetectable to the world around them, were idly following the student-teacher duo.

Just as Ms. Roemmele finished her ominous warning, the man clicked his fingers, and the world around them slowed down to a standstill. The birds froze mid-flight, and the leaves falling from the trees stilled in mid-air. Time itself crawled to a stop, holding everyone but the two mysterious entities completely frozen. The two entities made their way over to the boy frozen beside his teacher. The man looked him over curiously.

"He doesn't look as bad as we had thought he would," he commented. The woman flicked her hand. Various parts of the boy's body lit up yellow in their vision.

"Dozens of broken bones, damaged nerves, excessive blunt force trauma, lack of appropriate nutrition...looks can be deceiving"

"Indeed" the man muttered, retracting his previous statement. He gave another flick and the yellow light vanished, replaced by a pulsating blue aura around the boy's head. The man closed his eyes as he cocked his head to the right as if listening to what the pulsating light had to say to him, before with a wave of his hand, he made the light disappear.

"I sensed various issues in the mental structure in his mind...he's incredibly close to breaking," the man said quietly.

"He has the enormous weight of his destiny to uphold. And those broken shoulders will not be able to carry them." the woman stated with absolute certainty.

"Then fix them," the man said fiercely, " _Fix him_."

"We are not to interfere in the activities of wizardkind anymore," the woman warned, "You know the rules."

"We _made_ the rules," the man insisted.

" _Which is why we cannot break them!_ The others _will_ not take well to hypocrisy."

"The others will not take well to utter and complete _annihilation_ either," the man angrily snapped, "It's either this or doing nothing"

The woman seemed to have wanted to debate the point even more but held herself. Instead, she said, "We will have to fix his mind. His mind is his greatest tool, but its broken, and on the brink of falling off the edge."

"His guardians fear him. And that mindless fear of those who they believe to be better than them gives rise to hatred. Blinded by that hatred, they do this to him. Coupled with what happened to him on the night he was orphaned...well...I'm not surprised that his mind is in the condition that it is." noted the man somberly.

"We will need something to hold it together and keep it from breaking"

"Easily done," the man snapped his fingers, and Harry's head was enveloped in a luminescent red membrane, which then sunk into his brain.

"You should _not_ have done that," the woman admonished disapprovingly, "That ability is dangerous. Even _we_ won't be able to control his mind now and someone with magic that powerful being out of our control will not sit well with the others"

"The boy needed it. It'll keep the dangerous memories away and hold his psyche together. The others won't know about this. And there are ways to control a man other than to control his mind"

"Oh really? So enlighten me," the woman snapped, waving her hand, trying to undo whatever the man had done, and failing.

"Addiction."

The woman froze, "Keep talking."

"We give the boy power, and then we get him addicted to that power. So deeply and inherently addicted that he would be willing to give his own life to not lose his power. _That_ , not some primitive carrot and stick method that the others will suggest is what will ensure his loyalty."

"So your solution to keeping a powerful being under control is to...give it more power? Hand him an even more powerful weapon? Genius really." the woman mocked.

"No. Not a weapon." said the man, "Something _more_. Something that will be all-consuming. Something that will alter his very perception of the reality around him."

"So what you are thinking of..."

"Indeed." the man answered the unasked question, before raising his hand, which was now holding a glowing orb fully composed of a gently pulsating fractal light.

The woman hesitated for a second before she nodded, and the orb of light lifted from the man's hand, just as invisible to the world around it as the entities that summoned it, spinning and bathing its surroundings in a gentle rhythmic purple as it slowly descended down into Harry, permanently altering his true nature beyond anything that mankind or wizardkind could ever even comprehend.

Within the blink of an eye, the two entities vanished from their spots, and time resumed its normal flow.

* * *

Harry's head suddenly spiked with a sudden burst of unimaginable pain, and his knees almost buckled under him. But before he could even get his hand up to his head, the pain disappeared just as instantaneously as it had come.

Frowning, Harry massaged his head, wondering what in the world that pain was.

"Is there anything wrong Mr. Potter?" Ms. Roemmele asked, noticing his frown.

"Erm...No, ma'am. I'm fine," he replied.

And so they went off to Number 4, where Ms. Roemmele gave Harry a generic speech about bullying and adults and responsibility that went into Harry's one ear and flew right out of the other before she turned around and walked off to who knows where. After staring at his teacher's steadily disappearing back for a few more seconds, Harry had headed into Number 4 to no doubt face his Aunt's reprimands, completely oblivious to what he had become.

The rest of the day passed in a whirlwind of chores and 'BOY!'s, and by the time he had finished up all his chores and was putting away all the silverware that the Dursleys for some reason insisted on eating with, Harry was more tired than he had ever been after a regular day of work. So he stole a few slices of bread from the fridge and devoured one of them before he jumped onto the half broken cot in his cupboard and fell straight asleep. As he drifted into the realm of sleep, a ringing bell rang in his ears, but he was too far gone to wake up and see what it was.

The next day, after an unusually peaceful night of sleep, Harry blearily opened his eyes and stretched his arms as well as he could in the very limited space that he had. Feeling very refreshed, Harry yawned, before he suddenly caught sight of what was in front of him.

He blinked.

And he blinked again.

A translucent blue box hovered about a foot away from his head. There was some text in it.

 **You have slept in your own bed, HP and MP have been restored 100% each. All ailments and negative status effects have been cured.**

Harry blearily looked at the glowing screen before he reached out to touch it, and the box disappeared instantly.

Had that actually happened?

No.

No. It couldn't have.

It was probably the light from the cracks of the air vent of the cupboard or something. He didn't have his glasses on, so he must have imagined it or something like that. Maybe it was just his head telling him to stop staring at Dudley playing video games. He'd have to make sure not to mention this in front of his Uncle or Aunt, lest they finally get an excuse to dump him at some electro-shock-happy mental hospital.

Shaking his head, Harry absentmindedly moved to get off the bed and like the truly graceful little beast he was, slammed his head right into the low roof of the cupboard in the process.

"Ping!" he clearly heard, and this time, he clearly knew that it was definitely _not_ his imagination. He had definitely heard that. He rubbed his eyes and put on his glasses, before he stared disbelievingly at what was floating in the air in front of him.

 **Skill created!**

 **Skill: Physical Endurance, Lv-1 (5%)**

 **Your Body's durability increased and you take less damage.**

 **3% less damage from physical attacks.**

The text was immune to relative displacement, Harry concluded, as he moved his head about and saw the text remain unmoving in relation to his head. That it was intangible was something he discovered the moment he tried to touch it, only to see his hand go through the screen, leaving nothing but some barely visible ripples.

'What in the-?' Harry thought to himself, thoroughly puzzled out of his mind.

His mind sifted through ideas and discarded them at an incredible rate, and he found no possible explanation to how in the world could any of this crazy stuff be happening. Whatever it was, it looked real, felt real, and was very much like a game screen he'd seen in one of Dudley's old game-sets.

Harry took a deep breath and let it out, calming himself.

'Think about this logically, Harry' he told himself, 'If this is a game, there would be commands. And if there were commands, then there would be some sort of way to enter those commands.'

He didn't have some keyboard or controller to input those commands, and touch seemed to do nothing but move it around, so it had to be something else. Write it on the ground? Make weird hand motions? Voice control?

Deciding to try out the least crazy one of his hypothetical theories, he then opened his eyes and with all his determination, intoned, "Main Menu!"

Nothing.

"Character Sheet"

Nothing.

"Status."

Suddenly, a box appeared before him, and it read,

 **Harry Potter**

 **Health-100/100**

 **Mana-50/50**

 **The Gamer**

 **Title-None**

 **Level-2 Exp-30/400**

 **Race-?**

 **STR-2**

 **VIT-1(+2)=3**

 **DEX-2(+2)=4**

 **INT-1**

 **WIS-1**

 **LUC-3**

 **POINTS-0**

 **MONEY- 0£/0G0S0K**

 **Harry Potter is a ?, the son of Lily Potter and ?. He has bad eyesight making it difficult for him to do well in class. His ? has gotten him trouble over the years in various schools. Strange things seem to happen around him. Harry is unaware of who he is, and wishes to find meaning in his life. Harry hates the Dursleys.**

 **Status- ? giving Harry - +2 VIT, +2 DEX and the ability to?**

Harry stared at the floating screen for another split second, before whatever strange little cocktail of curiosity and willpower that was holding him together in this strange and lucid dream snapped, and the green-eyed boy fell back down into his cot fully unconscious.

* * *

 **So guess who the two beings are? And what are the thoughts on this new and improved Chapter 1? Let me know down in the Reviews or PMs! Would love to hear some thoughts.**


	2. Book-I:Figure It Out

Chapter 1:

The next morning Harry slowly came back to the land of the living. As the darkness slowly drifted away from in front of his eyes, his ears were filled by the unrelenting and increasingly loud banging of his cupboard door. Just as Harry had struggled to his feet and opened the door, his aunt's lovely and melodious voice pierced his sensitive ears.

"GET UP you ungrateful brat! Go upstairs, change out of those filthy clothes and get to the kitchen! You have five minutes. Or I'll let Vernon have his way and lock you in the cupboard for the next three days." Petunia Dursley threatened said as she dragged Harry out of the cupboard and onto his feet, "Dudley wants hotcakes and Vernon needs his tea."

Harry blinked and stared at the floating box above Petunia's head.

"What are you looking at boy? Get to it!" she snapped.

Harry looked at Petunia and then shook his head before shakily replying, "I-I'm sorry Aunt Petunia. I think I must have just hit my head while waking up."

Petunia looked at him with a dirty frown for a second before she squinted into the cupboard. "Well I suppose you are getting a little too big for this thing now," she grumbled before she walked off into the kitchen.

Harry, after that odd encounter, made a beeline straight for the bathroom and stared at his reflection in the mirror, desperately trying to calm himself down from this state of utter terror that he was in. On his way upstairs he had seen Dudley in his room with a floating box above his head just as Aunt Petunia had, and with some trepidation asked him if he'd heard any noises in the night.

"Like a bell," he had specified, "the kind in video games that go, 'ping!'"

Dudley had scratched his chin and looked away from his Sega; one of the many things Harry was jealous of Dudley for; and replied, "Ping? No! Have you hit your head or something? Maybe I should tell Mum and Dad. They'll make sure you end up in some loony bin far away."

With a self-satisfied grin, he had waddled off downstairs, and Harry had shaken his head, wondering why he had even bothered asking.

Pulling his mind back into the moment, he looked back into his reflection's eyes and took a deep breath, pushing down all his fear into the depths of his mind. Bottling up one's emotions wasn't a particularly hard art to master, especially for a pre-teen, and soon a veil of complete calmness fell on his mind.

'Alright, I shouldn't panic. I need to think through this logically,' he thought to himself. One thing was for sure. Last night's dream wasn't a dream. And if it wasn't a dream, it had to have been some sort of hallucination.

It certainly wasn't a bad explanation, Harry decided. It could be some sort of drugs, or even one of those weird mushrooms, causing his hallucinations. Perhaps they had somehow made his way into his food or water, or perhaps they had been airborne. It was possible. Definitely possible.

A strange image of a man wearing a cinema projector on his head suddenly flashed into Harry's mind, and bemusedly, Harry took a moment to consider the strange idea that something could actually be projecting a screen in front of him. But as soon as that thought made it into his mind he immediately dismissed it. Aunt Petunia and Dudley hadn't noticed anything on him, nor any projections.

Another strange thought floated into his mind.

He could see those boxes clearly without his glasses, and that implied only one thing. That he wasn't seeing something real. That whatever was happening, it was happening inside his mind.

An odd, almost insane thought drifted to the front of his mind...one that had occurred to him last night, but that he had discarded in the heat of the moment.

 _'My life is a game.'_

"No . . ." he thought with a rising amount of panic. These strange...weird...out of ordinary ideas that he was thinking of...they were _not_ something that he would have thought of by himself. He was a fairly reasonable kid and this was too far out for him to have thought up on his own. Something was _definitely_ influencing his mind . . .

'Drugs,' he thought with a spike of panic, 'It has to be drugs!'

Thankfully, there was a quick and easy way of testing that. Being Harry in the Dursley house meant you only got to eat and drink the bare minimum needed to survive. That meant he could easily check everything that he had consumed in the last few days. Quickly pulling on fresh clothes, Harry ran down the stairs and into the kitchen, where he opened the fridge and grabbed the remaining few loaves of bread that were remaining from the package he had stolen from last night. They were the only thing he had eaten in the last 3 days, and if there was anything in his body that had gotten in there with his mouth, it would've been through these.

Checking to see that Dudley; who was seated at the table; wasn't looking, he crumbled the bread into dust, dropped it into Dudley's juice, and used a spoon to stir it in. He then took it over and handed it to Dudley. The boy took it, gave it a dainty little sniff, tossed a smirk towards Harry, and downed the entire glass before letting out a loud burp. He then jumped off the chair and waddled off upstairs. Throughout it all, Harry watched him with keen eyes.

Nothing.

No reaction at all.

This, combined with the fact that the rest of the house drank the same water as him, ruled out his little theory of drugs.

Harry stilled, and his mind went into overdrive, completely of his control, making all the connections for him. The Gamer under his name last night, the status screens, the text he'd seen above Aunt Petunia's head, and the lack of anything else that seemed even a close enough probable reason for his...condition...it all left him with only one possible explanation he could cling on to his current situation. It wasn't ideal and he wasn't anywhere near convinced, but it was all he had.

"When you have eliminated the impossible," he muttered to himself, "whatever remains, however improbable...must be the truth."

* * *

On his way downstairs, Harry slipped into Dudley's second bedroom. After a good amount of ruffling around in the dust and old toys, he found what he was looking for. A small booklet about the role-playing board game things that Dudley used to play with Piers Polkiss before he first got his computer. He quickly stuffed it into his pocket and rushed downstairs, fearful of his Uncle's wrath.

As he absentmindedly cooked breakfast for his relatives, Harry had some time to give some calm thought to his situation.

Since he had decided to settle on this...Gamer theory, for lack of a better term, for his condition until he had a better idea of what was going on, he had a plethora of questions that he needed to ponder upon.

Had he been like...this...all his life, or had something turned him this way? Strange things had always happened around him, something he had always thought was the reason his relatives liked to call him a 'freak' but turning Mrs. Cole's wig blue had nothing on this full-blown reality reboot thing. Despite that, Harry couldn't help but think that there was a relation between the two.

And perhaps there was, because after all, in most cases the simplest explanation is usually the correct one.

 **For** **thinking about this new ability in relation with Occam's Razor in mind, you have gained +1 WIS.**

Harry blinked.

'Really?' he thought, 'It is _that_ simple? And what in the world is Occam's Razor?'

Just to make sure, Harry intoned once again, "Status," and there it was, on his profile's list of statistics.

 **WIS-2**

"Matter over mind," Harry muttered bemusedly. Reality was shaping his character in the Game, and the game was giving his traits in real life a quantified presence. It was as if someone had put a new operating system on...him. Harry promptly decided to give it a test, and after a quick look at his Uncle to make sure he wasn't looking, tossed and flipped the hotcake he was making.

 **For performing amateur chef theatrics with a poorly made hotcake, you have gained +1 DEX.**

Harry grinned and quickly gave it another go, flipping the hotcake.

Nothing.

Maybe he hadn't done it right. Frowning, he gave the pancake yet another flip.

Nothing again.

It didn't take him much longer to conclude that the stat upgrades must be getting harder and harder to get the more of them he got. Thinking it best to play it safe, he quickly finished up and served breakfast before shoving a piece of toast into his pocket for himself and heading off to the garden to finish up his chores.

"Status" He whispered to himself as he started weeding the rose bushes.

 **Harry Potter**

 **Health-100/100**

 **Mana-50/50**

 **The Gamer**

 **Title-None**

 **Level-2 Exp-30/400**

 **Race-?**

 **STR-2**

 **VIT-1(+2)=3**

 **DEX-3(+2)=5**

 **INT-1**

 **WIS-2**

 **LUC-3**

 **POINTS-0**

 **MONEY- 0£/0G0S0K**

It was all very confusing, but that didn't necessarily mean that it was bad. The positive side effects of this were already quite obvious to him. He could literally measure his skill and strength in numbers and fine-tune _himself_ to focus on necessary aspects of his life. That thought alone bore infinite potential.

Harry grinned at that thought and quickly looked down the sheet at his stats, at which point his grin slipped right off his face and into the manure he was shoveling into the bush bed.

To be entirely fair, he thought, he hadn't ever seen anyone else's numbers, so had nothing to compare it with, but it all just looked a little bit pathetic.

His strength was a 2, his vitality was at a base of 1, but for some reason was a 3 now. His dexterity was similar to vitality, since it was 3 as a base stat, but was now 5. The only thing that was good was his luck which was at a 3 by default. And his intelligence and wisdom were atrocious by and in themselves.

It all made no sense to him. He always thought his strength was his intelligence and that he had the worse luck of anyone he knew.

Deciding not to question it too much, he opened up the booklet he'd nicked and quickly read through it. However, with exception to some things about skills and perks, he couldn't find many things that seemed like they were very useful. He quickly grew frustrated with it and stuffed it back into his pocket. It took a few seconds, but once the frustration had left him, Harry wondered if there were actually any skills or something similar that was a part of the game.

Hoping that the game still had its voice command thing going for it, Harry called out, "Skills."

Just then a box appeared before him, showing three different sections. Harry clicked one and a red box popped out.

 **A Gamer's Mind(Passive-Dynamic)**

 **Allows the user to calmly and logically think things through. Allows peaceful state of mind, immune to psychological status and effects.**

Harry could've yelled with relief. He knew it! There _was_ something influencing his mind. Maybe it wasn't as malicious as some weird drugs, but that didn't change the fact that he was right. It certainly explained why he was being so calm about all this. He wasn't necessarily a person who lacked inner calm, but the way facts and events were easily fitting together in his mind was extremely unnatural and not like him. Before this, he would freak out about the fact that he could always regrow his hair when it was cut, but due to this skill, he felt calm and collected in the face of all this life-changing stuff, which was...quite welcome.

Harry then went back and saw the other two skills he had;

 **-A Gamer's Body(Passive-Static)**

 **Grants the user a body that allows the user to live the real world like a game.**

 **-Skill: Physical Endurance, Lv.1 (10%)**

 **Your Body's durability increased and you take less damage.**

 **3% less damage from physical attacks.**

Harry read and re-read the Gamer's Body skill. If what it was saying was true, then his earlier metaphor of this feeling like a new operating system of himself probably had more weight than he had first imagined.

Pausing to take a look at his levels in the skills, Harry frowned. He wasn't very good in these areas either. He was going to have to find out some stuff about how this all worked and do a lot of leveling up if he wanted to get any-

'NO!' Harry suddenly thought.

He didn't know what this whole thing was, and the fact that it was influencing his mind combined with the fact that his first thought was to jump right into the grind of things in this Game was an incredibly suspicious thing to happen. Perhaps the best thing to do was to not do anything...

Yet somehow, even as he thought it, the thought and its accompanying wariness were fading from his mind, and it vanished the moment a sudden ping rang in his ears.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Find someone to teach you about video games so you can be good at your life which is now a video game!**

 **Rewards:**

 **50xp**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry read it. 50xp! That would take him a real notch up towards a level up!

With a grin, he quickly pressed yes, earlier doubts forgotten.

He suddenly paused as another question popped into his head. Where did the quest come from? Did it come from himself, or was there a game master out there reading his thoughts and making things up for him to do? Harry wondered about that and then decided to try a little experiment of sorts. If it was his own aspirations and thoughts that made his quests, then if he concentrated hard enough, he could make his own quest.

So he took a deep breath and focused on the most absurd thought he could think of. All of a sudden,

'Ping!'

'No bloody way,' he muttered as he read the quest in front of him.

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Turn the Dursleys into sperm whales.**

 **Rewards:**

 **100xp**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry quickly pressed no and sighed to himself. It seemed like he was the one setting the goals and deciding on the quests, although it seemed like someone else determined the rewards for completing his quests. It was all just too confusing.

'Ping!'

 **For learning about the game mechanics and figuring out how quests work(somewhat) you have gained 1 INT!**

Harry blinked before he pulled up his status screen and there it was;

 **INT-2**

He was starting to see a pattern with the stats now. Wise decisions seemed to make him wiser and learning new things made him smarter. If he had to wager, he would put his money on exercise making him stronger and a healthier diet making his vitality go up. He was blanking on ideas for Luck though. It seemed strange that such a random thing could be quantified into a simple number.

Harry wiped all the boxes away and cleared his head trying to think. Something strange was up with this whole Game, something that he was missing because he knew so little about games in general.

Shaking his head and pushing those thoughts to the back of his mind, Harry patted down the soil around the stem of the bush he was working on and turned to look at the clock through the window. With a sharp jolt of panic, he realized that he was running late for class.

'Crap!' Harry thought as he dashed into the house and into his cupboard. As he was hurriedly putting on his uniform, a sudden ping distracted him, much to his annoyance.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **You're late! Get to class on time!**

 **Reward:**

 **20xp**

 **Failure:**

 **Detention**

 **Less reputation with everyone in class**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry frowned as he immediately pressed yes and focused on getting ready. Quickly, he finished his bath, put on his well worn St. Grogory's uniform and rushed out of Number 4 Privet Drive, dashing off in the direction of his school, cursing the game for making him late.

Little did he know, being late had saved his life.

* * *

Harry turned the street corner, fully intent on running full speed into the school and slipping into the class, finding one of the other kids who played games and get as much information about Role Playing Games from them as possible, thus completing the Quest and get closer to leveling up. But all those ideas instantly vanished from his mind the moment he took in the sight in front of him.

The entire street was empty...unnaturally so. Not even the usually bustling shops around the end of the pathways had anyone in them, and the always busy sidewalks full of late students and class-bunk-ers were completely devoid of life.

No one was there.

No one except the three figures standing in a circle in front of the school's main gate.

No... not three, Harry realized as he approached quietly, trying not to draw attention to himself. There was a fourth, smaller form lying on the ground...someone familiar. It was too small to be Dudley, and too tall and lanky to be anyone from his gang, but Harry had definitely seen before.

Whoever it was, the rather sickeningly large puddle of red liquid surrounding him; blood, Harry realized with a lurch in his stomach; didn't bode well for him.

'Murderers.'

The word flashed in Harry's mind of his own volition, and instantly his face drained of all color.

'Not now!' he thought to himself. Now wasn't the time for wild theories. Maybe they were just trying to help. But either way, he needed to find out what was going on.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Find out what is going on.**

 **Reward-**

 **100xp**

 **Failure-**

 **The trio** **will learn you know about them and will 'take care of it.'**

 **YES/NO?**

Not taking long to read the quest and press Yes, Harry swiftly rushed closer to them. As soon as he could, he ducked behind a telephone pole and started listening. Their voices were starting to reach his ears.

"His wounds," a man's gravelly voice asked grimly, "Will they heal?"

"They should," said another man with a much younger voice, "It's not a spell I've seen before, but it looks like a bunch of normal deep wounds. Nothing our expert here can't handle. Isn't that right Em?"

"Yes," came the clipped reply from a woman's voice.

Harry audibly gasped. It wasn't just any woman. Harry knew that voice quite well from countless hours of nonsensical Chemistry lectures. It was Ms. Roemmele. And unfortunately for him, his gasp didn't go unnoticed.

"Did you hear that?" he heard the man ask, and he froze. This had never happened to him before. Sure, he tended to find himself in strange situations quite often, but this was a bit too grim even for me.

"Who is it?! Come out or we will be forced to shoot!" Ms. Roemmele's voice warned, and Harry broke out of his stupor. He knew better than to think she wasn't serious. After a few seconds of hesitating, he finally made up his mind. Taking a deep breath and holding his hands up like he had seen in those old cop movies, he walked out from behind the telephone pole.

All three of the figures were standing around the fallen boy protectively, shielding him as they pointed sticks with glowing tips at Harry.

"Har-Mr. Potter!" Ms. Roemmele said in relief, catching herself halfway through saying his first name. Harry paused. She never called _anyone_ by anything other than their surname. And then he looked up at the floating box above her head.

 **Emmeline Vance Order of the Phoenix**

 **LV-20**

Harry stared at it in shock. Ms. Roemmele wasn't who she said she was. Instead of just a cranky old teacher, she was an incredibly high-leveled person. And judging from what he had seen of the Game so far, a high level almost universally meant danger. Which meant that the two men standing behind her were just as dangerous if, not more.

 **Boris Maghian** **Order of the Phoenix**

 **LV-22**

and

 **Sullivan Jones** **Order of the Phoenix**

 **LV-42**

and above the injured kid lying on the floor,

 **Gordon Jack Game Lover**

 **LV-4**

Harry could've soiled his pants had he known what level-42 meant in terms of the Game, but since he had nothing to compare it with other than his own age's levels, he could do nothing but feel a healthy dose of fear and respect settle into his mind. Warily, he approached the trio, who were holding up and pointing strange polished sticks at him.

Upon seeing his face, they all lowered their sticks. Harry frowned in confusion. Had he stumbled into some sort of mid-day cult ritual?

"Mr. Potter! are you alright there?" Ms. Roemmele asked, seeming uncharacteristically relieved to see him.

Unable to form words in his confused state, he simply nodded. One of the men; the younger one; walked over to him and waved his stick over Harry's head, muttering inaudibly, before he turned to Ms. Roemmele and nodded.

"Good," the older man said gruffly,"We were about to head out and look for you. Figured the attacker would try and come for you next after he missed you this time."

Harry's eyes widened. "Me!" he half-screamed half-squeaked, "This was supposed to happen to me?!"

"Sully! You are out of line!" Ms. Roemmele angrily snapped at the older man, but Harry was having none of it. He had stayed quiet long enough, and today's bizarre events were starting to wear thin on his patience.

"Now hold on a second. What is going on here? What happened to Gordon? Who are these people? And who is after _me_?"

"Calm down Harry," the younger man said, "Sully was just kidding. No one is after you. Your friend will be just fine in just a moment. You don't have to worry at all."

"Fine?!" Harry said incredulously, looking at the deep cuts littered across Gordon's still, unmoving body. "From what angle does that look _fine_ to you sickos!"

Ms. Roemmele had had enough. " _Mr. Potter!_ That will be enough out of you. If you want to see your friend live, you will be quiet and let us heal him. If not, then you are free to do whatever you want, but I swear in the name of all that is holy that if you act out while I am trying to save this boy's life, I _will_ have your hide."

That did the trick.

Harry stopped, and hesitantly nodded. With a curt tip of her head, Ms. Roemmele turned around and dropped to her knees, pulling out that strange stick from her pocket and waving it over Gordon's body. Harry watched with wide eyes as the muscle and sinew restitched itself and the skin slowly closed over all the cuts on his body, utterly fascinated and terrified at the exact same time.

Behind them, the two men were having a conversation of their own.

"How in the world did he see us? Didn't your Confundus work right?"

"It worked perfectly. He shouldn't be able to see us right now. I don't know what is happening."

"Must be something related to the protections. Or maybe accidental magic?"

Their murmurings continued, but Harry tuned them out. None of what they were talking about made sense to him anyway.

A few minutes later, with one final wave and flick of the stick, the tears in Gordon's clothes restitched themselves. Ms. Roemmele turned towards Harry and smiled at his gobsmacked look, before turning to Boris, the younger man, and saying, "Get the boys to their class. You know what to do."

Boris nodded, but Harry was having none of it.

"Hold on a minute. I'm not going anywhere until you tell me what happened here and how you are able to do all those things and heal Gordon like that."

Boris sighed, before kneeling down to look Harry in the eyes.

"Harry. I know you are confused and I know you are scared, but I need you to come with me. All you need to know right now is that a bad man attacked your friend, and we will catch him in no time. Your friend will be just fine. He was treated by one of the Auror's best. Soon it will be like none of this ever happened. I promise."

Harry was about ask something, but he hesitated. He was well aware that they were humoring him, and that if they wanted, they could knock him out and make him do what they wanted easily. Knowing the futility of his situation, he nodded. Boris smiled, before getting up to his feet and picking Gordon up onto his shoulder.

"Best not to Levitate him while I'm maintaining the Confundus eh?" he said, and Harry nodded, despite having no idea what he was talking about.

As they walked towards the school building, snippets of conversation floated towards them from behind.

"It will be like nothing happened," the older man scoffed, "Except that it won't. Potter will forget, sure, but this wasn't a message to him. It's a message to us. Someone managed to nearly kill him. Despite all of us and Dumbledore's protections, someone managed to get close enough for this to happen. Do you _need_ more reason to realize that we should take the child back to our World? Screw the old man and his plans."

"It's not our choice to make," Harry heard Ms. Roemmele say just as they walked out of earshot.

Boris helped Harry up the stairs, down the long corridor, and into his classroom. Much to Harry's shock, when they walked into the fully in-swing class, none of the children or even the teacher seemed to even notice them. It was as if the three of them were invisible to the rest of the class. Boris took him and sat him down in his usual seat, which Harry realized with a chill that this stranger already knew, then sat Gordon down at his desk and positioned him as if he was sleeping before walking over to Harry and kneeling down next to him, strange stick in hand.

"Harry. I am going to do a simple little trick. It'll make you forget all of this. It'll be like all of this never happened. Would you like that?"

Not knowing what to say to the strange man with extraordinary and dangerous abilities that terrified him, Harry simply nodded. With a smile, the man pointed his stick at him and intoned, "Obliviate."

A blinding flash of light filled Harry's vision and simultaneously his head filled with pain, and when he regained his bearings, the man was gone.

He sat there, wide-eyed until a ping sounded in his ears.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **You're late dunghead! Get to class on time!**

 **Reward:**

 **20xp**

Ping!

 **Quest Completed!**

 **Find out what is going on.**

 **Reward:**

 **100xp**

Harry almost scoffed out loud. He didn't have a _shred_ of an idea about what was going on. The only thing he knew was that Gamer's Mind had probably just saved him from whatever this man had planned to do to his memories, and for that, he was grateful.

* * *

Harry then spent the rest of the day trying, and failing to pay attention in class. He could only think about all the strange things that had happened since this morning. His life was a game and his teacher was a cult psycho...it was a wild time. He had even pinched himself quite painfully a few times just to make sure he wasn't dreaming. By lunchtime, Harry was fed up with himself for overthinking the thing too much. So, he instead decided to focus on his next quest, intent on finding someone who knew a lot about video games.

A memory of that morning floated into his mind once again, and this time for once, it was a useful bit of information.

The Title of the boy that had been hurt was Game Lover.

If there ever was a more obvious clue as to who he was supposed to talk to, Harry had never seen it. Hence, he quickly looked around the class and found Gordon, who had been ranting to his friends about the teacher punishing him for sleeping in class. Harry knew that the punishment was the fault of that Boris person, but he wasn't stupid enough to open his mouth, especially when one of those three people was one of his teachers.

 **Gordon Jack Game Lover**

 **LV-3**

Harry got up from his seat and walked over to the brown haired boy, absently noticing that he was a level lower than he had been before.

"Excuse me, Gordon," Harry said, tapping him on the shoulder. Gordon turned and looked at him in surprise, "Harry? What do you want?"

Harry fiddled with his sleeve nervously, "Well I...um...Gordon I was thinking...you're pretty into Role Playing Games right?"

Gordon looked at Harry with a frown, almost as if he was suspicious that Harry was here to make fun of him, before slowly nodding, "Yeah...I DM from time to time."

"Well," Harry asked, "I was wondering whether you could help me out with a game I started playing."

"Really? What kind of game?" Gordon asked, interest piqued and all traces of suspicion gone from his eyes.

"Well...it's kind of like an adventure game. The hero wakes up and has to do quests and all, he finds himself in...let's call it the magic world. I was wondering whether you could help me do better by giving me clues and such."

Ping!

 **Skill Created!**

 **Lying, Lv-1 (20%)**

 **This is your ability to lie to people, the higher the level the better the lie and less chance of discovery!**

 **2% chance of success, less based on how extreme the lie is.**

Harry frowned. The 2% thing was a rip-off. Harry _knew_ he was a better liar than that. He lied successfully to the Dursleys all the time.'This game is rigged!' he thought angrily.

Luckily though, it seemed that Gordon had bought the lie. He nodded and thought about it for a minute before saying, "Okay so what are the Hero's stats?"

Harry recalled them from memory and then told them out loud to Gordon.

"Well there is a plus point to the low stats," Gordon said leaving Harry surprised, "This means you can choose to improve whatever stat you want. Meaning you can make your own character."

"What do you mean?"

"Well usually in games there are classes. You improve the stat that helps you for each class. For example, a warrior will require an improvement on Str, Dex and Vit while ignoring the rest."

Harry nodded, understanding that clearly, "But what about Int, Wis, and Luck? Isn't that a disadvantage?"

Gordon shrugged, "True, but most players don't care."

"So what are the best ways to improve stats?"

"Well, that would be to do things that would improve them, like say for Str you should make the character lift heavy stuff, for Vit you should make him run a lot. Things like that."

Harry then connected the dots, "So let's say character thought a lot about ideas and such, would that increase his Wis?"

"Well, theoretically yes. I suppose. But that's not possible since game characters can't think. The best way to improve Wis would be to solve puzzles. Reading books would improve Int, but other than that I don't really know of any other ways."

"What about stat points? How do I get those?"

"You get those as you evolve Harry, but you've got to be careful so that you never use them."

"Then what am I supposed to do?" he asked, wondering what the point of them was.

"Save them for a later date, since for now, it is easier to train each stat by doing some work. For example, since your game character has an Int of 2, if he simply reads a book or two he should automatically gain a stat point if Int."

Harry's eyes widened, "Seriously?!"

"Yeah. But if Int was higher, let's say 30 or something, he would have to read a hundred books just for one extra stat points. You see where I'm going with this?"

Harry nodded, grateful, "Yes I do. You're are saying that it will be difficult later on to obtain stat points and to do so now by doing menial tasks."

"Yup."

"Thank you so much, Gordon. This helped me a lot."

Ping!

 **Quest completed!**

 **Find someone to teach you about video games so you can be good at your life which is now a video game!**

 **Rewards:**

 **50xp**

 **Exp-200/400**

Gordon nodded at his thanks as Harry waved the window away and added, "Just don't forget to always save and have plenty of health potions in your inventory."

"Inventory?" Harry asked out loud, and suddenly a brown box appeared in front of him, causing Harry to jump in surprise. Quickly regaining his composure, he looked around to check whether anyone was looking at him. Finding no one, Harry studied the new box carefully.

It was labeled Inventory, and it had several empty boxes. Harry slowly walked to his desk and sat down with the inventory box in front of him. He took out an eraser and then pressed it against the box, pushing it forward. Golden ripples spread across the box, and the eraser disappeared from Harry's hands and reappeared in the inventory, labeled Eraser.

Harry smiled. The ideas were already starting to churn in his head.

* * *

That night Harry could hardly stop himself from looking over his stats time and again, agonizingly staring at his lackluster numbers and atrocious levels, bitterly noting that he would need to improve on them all. The game was reflecting reality, and the reality was that Harry was in atrocious condition for his age.

The inventory was pretty amazing though. So far, he had put several things inside it for safe keeping. Whatever little sum of cash that he had stolen from Uncle Vernon's pocket through the years now appeared on his status page as a number.

 **Money-50£/0G0S0K**

Curious about how the game would identify currency, he tried asking for Francs and to his utmost surprise, he pulled out a note from the French Currency. Curious about the G, S, and K in his money stats, he asked for Gs and waited. The minutes passed and nothing seemed to drop out of thin air. Shrugging at this, Harry marveled at this nifty little thing he had discovered.

Dozens of times he had heard Uncle Vernon moan about the atrocious conversion fees they had to pay every time they took a trip abroad, and while Harry didn't quite understand the economic implications of free cross-currency conversion, he knew that he had found free access to something that cost a fair amount of money. And that was enough to put a smile on his face.

A few hours later, having read and re-read every screen he could pull up in his Game, Harry laid down on his bed and as he often did to lull himself to sleep, started counting grains of wood on his roof.

Ping!

 **By observing your surroundings you have created a skill!**

 **Observe Lv-1 (10%)**

 **By Observing a target one will get information about said object**

 **Lv-1-Max HP, MP and info.**

Harry paused a second to read the box before closing it with a wave. He'd gained a new skill, and it was clear that what he needed to do now was to figure out how in the world was he supposed to go about using it.

Observe...maybe it worked if he stared at something for a long time, Harry thought and proceeded to stare intently at the roof of his cupboard. It took him five whole minutes of looking like an utter buffoon to decide that perhaps that wasn't the best way to go about it.

'It listened to my voice before,' Harry mused, 'Maybe it'll do it again.'

"Observe," he slowly whispered, having decided that the voice-thing made sense. Much to his pleasant surprise, a box popped open in front of him.

 **The Cupboard Under The Stairs**

 **This is the room of Harry Potter, where the Dursleys keep him to make sure he doesn't spread his ? to them.**

Harry's smile disappeared.

There it was again. That question mark. There sure seemed to be a lot of question marks in his life...things that he didn't know...things that even the Game didn't seem to want to reveal to him.

He wiped the box away with a frown.

What could he possibly have that made the Dursleys hate him? Some disease? Maybe he was haunted? Was it something related to his Gamer abilities? Something related to that magic cult thing Ms. Roemmele did? Even this new skill, 'Observe', refused to tell him what that reason was. It was almost as if it wanted him to find out himself.

Harry paused. Perhaps that was it.

He was the hero of his own Game and this was his quest. To discover who he was and where he belonged...to grow stronger...to find out who his parents were. Maybe _that_ was his mission. And just as the thought passed through his mind, something interesting happened.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Find where you belong!**

 **Reward** **:**

 **Find out about all your abilities.**

 **1000 Exp**

 **Failure** **:**

 **Death.**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry froze. It was almost as if a stone had stuck itself in his throat. In his young age, it took a minute for him to realize what it was.

Fear.

He was scared of dying. Especially now, when he was on the brink of knowing so much more about himself, the word 'death' at this moment scared him more than anything he had ever thought would scare him before.

And it was at that moment he realized another thing. He didn't want his life to end like this. He didn't want to die as Harry Potter, the boy that everyone hated and did just so-so in his class. He wanted to be something more. Something beyond his pathetic beginnings. Something great. And to achieve that, he needed to get over his fear, risk his life, and find out who he was.

A strange little phrase that Ms. Roemmele had read out in class a few weeks ago made his way to the front of his mind, sounding oddly appropriate at the moment.

 _Sic Parvis Magna._

Greatness from small beginnings.

And gulping down that stone in his throat, Harry took a deep breath and pressed yes.

* * *

The next morning was Sunday, and as soon as Harry woke up, he quickly started weeding the garden, intent on finishing up his chores as fast as possible and finding new ways of leveling up a few of his stats. As he moved on towards the edge of the garden, engrossed in his thoughts as he was, he didn't notice as his hand brushed against a small smooth rock with some strange marks on it.

What he did notice very clearly, was when his eyesight started flashing red and a red box popped up showing his mana bar as it started falling rapidly.

 **...5...4...3...2...1...0**

Before he could even pull together the mental strength to formulate an actual thought, Harry promptly fell down to his knees and blacked out.

* * *

 **Having fun with these rewrites and edits while I refamiliarize myself with the story. Added a lot of doubt and wariness coming from Harry towards the game. I think that's a lot more appropriate than going, 'ma laife's a game now boi!' and going boom boom shaka laka. Anyway, hope you've enjoyed the chapter.**

 **P.S. Gordon losing a level is very much an intentional thing. You'll see in Chapter 4. Something caused him to gain a level and that Obliviate took away all the experiences that caused him to level up. We'll follow Carrow almost exculsively that chapter, and his journey will explain a lot. It is one I'm excited to tell.**


	3. Book-I:A Leaky Truth

Chapter 2:

For the longest while, there was nothing. Then there was darkness. And then there was light.

When Harry woke up from his unplanned vacation from the land of the living, his welcome wasn't quite as pleasant as he had expected. A blinding headache threatened to split his head in half, and the bright light filtering into his squinted eyes wasn't helping. For a moment he wondered if there was some higher power out there playing a sick joke by making him wake up with a headache every day, but the thought was soon wiped from his mind when he noticed the flashing red screen in front of him.

 **Mana-2/50**

He tried to raise his hand to wipe away the window, but instead managed to give himself a nasty surprise as he pulled on the saline tubes connected to the needles that were in his arm.

Surprised and a little queasy, he turned to look around at the room he was in.

It was a sterile place, cleaned to the point of obsession and furnished with a couple of chairs, his bed, a metal table, and a rather old television. With some trepidation, Harry recognized the seal of St. Brutus General Hospital on the wall in front of his bed. He remembered it on account having visited quite a few times before on account of injuries like a broken arm, fractured bones, and other cuts and bruises that Dudley managed to 'accidentally' end up giving him.

This wasn't good. Last he remembered, he had passed out in his garden, presumably due to excessive mana drainage, and his relatives must have brought him all the way out here. Wasting their time with his own problems was a sure-fire way to get himself starved for the week.

A nurse, Nurse Jane, judging from the box floating above her head, entered the room. Upon seeing him awake, she gave him a small smile.

"All awake now Harry?" she asked, picking up a board hanging on the end of his bed and making a few notes and ticks.

Upon seeing him nod, she said, "We've called your uncle to pick you up. They should be here any minute now. Please be careful to make sure that you don't work outside in the sun for so long Harry. You were all dehydrated and burning up when you were brought in." She chided.

Harry absently nodded as he looked around the room, catching sight of the calendar.

His eyes widened. This was worse than he could have ever imagined. He had been here for two whole days! The nurse saw what he was staring at and spoke while she unhooked all the tubes from his arm and held a tuft of cotton wool over the punctures. "Your uncle and a neighbor of yours-Fig or something her name was- brought you in on Sunday. As I said, you were entirely dehydrated and burning up with a high fever. Almost made the doctor put you into intensive care. But rest assured, you are fine now. Take care of yourself a bit more and keep drinking water regularly and you'll be right as rain in no time."

Harry sat up and smiled at her as she left and continued the inspection of his room.

Finding nothing more interesting to look at, he leaned back into his bed and was about to close his eyes when he suddenly caught sight of his Aunt walking in his direction out of the window.

With a sigh, Harry got up, knowing that they would be leaving quickly. He put on his clothes and got out of the room to walk over to her.

Together, they walked in complete silence to the reception desk where Aunt Petunia signed some papers and quickly walked off towards the familiar Chevette standing in front of the hospital, Harry in tow.

As the got closer to the car, Harry saw Dudley inside the car and wondered for a brief moment why his entire family had come to pick him up from the hospital. It was a seriously out of character thing for them to do. It was when he finally noticed the heaping pile of presents in the back-seat that he realized what day it was.

It was Dudley's birthday.

Aunt Petunia opened the front door and got in. Harry didn't bother. He knew what was coming. Walking over to the driver's side, he leaned down to hear what his Uncle Vernon had rolled his window open to say.

"Now listen here boy!" he started, very obviously miffed at Harry, "We had plans to go to the zoo for Dudley's birthday, but being the jealous little brat that you are, you had to go and faint right in the front lawn. But just because Miss Figg made us bring you here doesn't mean we will let you spoil our Duddydum's special day. No, we won't I tell you!" Vernon angrily declared as he fished out his wallet and handed Harry a few bills.

"Make your way home. No stealing food or spending money on anything other than the fare, or its straight to the cupboard with you! Now go!"

With those words, the Dursleys drove off, leaving a very confused 10-year-old behind.

Harry stood there gaping after the rapidly disappearing car. His relatives were truly one of a kind. He slowly tore his eyes off the fast vanishing car and looked down at his hands. This was the first sum of money that the Dursleys had ever given him. _Ever._ And he didn't know whether to be happy or sad about it.

After a few more seconds, when Gamer's mind had just asserted itself and smoothed his brain processes, suddenly, a brown box appeared in his sight and threw him into a state of panic again.

Ping!

 **Shield of Lily** **acquired as a** **permanent** **perk!**

 **SoL g** **rants 20** **to all stats** **against** **all magicals with ill intent. W** **ill** **nullify completely when Harry reaches the age 17. Represents the pure unconditional protective nature of a mother's love. Such is the power of Lily's sacrifice of her life for Harry.**

Tears escaped Harry's eyes as he read about his mother. It didn't matter that he didn't know what the Game meant by her sacrifice. It didn't matter that he was confused as all hell. It didn't matter that he had been lied to his whole life by the only people he could call family...none of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was that his mother wasn't a no good drunk who had gotten herself killed in a car accident. She had sacrificed herself to protect her son. And that, above anything else, mattered. Anger, joy, relief, regret, and sorrow gripped his heart wave after wave as he read over the description again and again.

And as tears escaped his eyes, he made a vow to himself right then and there. He vowed that he would honor his mum's sacrifice, that he would be the very best he could be, and that he would make his mum proud.

And he vowed that he would make the Dursleys pay.

* * *

Harry had never had what parents around the world would call a diverse upbringing. Being stuck in a cupboard for most of his early life wasn't particularly conducive to meeting new people and making new friends. As such, he had never really been exposed to many cultures around the world. So it was hardly surprising that being allowed to travel through London, one of the world's hottest travel destinations was going to be quite an experience for the young Potter.

Harry was having the time of his life, using Observe on every random stranger on the streets and marveling at their own unique stories and traits and levels. He had never even known that so many different names even existed. One stormy-eyed stranger even had the name,

 **Jupiter Optimus Maximus**

It was the name of an actual Roman god, Harry noted enviously. He wistfully thought of the many amazing and colorful names he could have had instead of just _Harry_ , and kept on walking lazily down the footpath. There was no hurry, since the Dursleys were known to take their sweet time on their days out, especially with Dudley whining at them to buy more presents.

After a lot of Observing and sneakily spying on people without their knowledge,

Ping!

 **Through constant use a skill has level up!**

 **Observe Lv-2 (40%)**

 **By Observing a target one will get information about said object**

 **-Max HP, MP, stats and info.**

Harry had been pleasantly surprised by how good it felt to level up a skill, and it was that pleasant feeling that made him drift towards his next destination.

Well, that feeling and one other thing.

Those people…the three people he had encountered in front of a dying Gordon in that dream-like event that morning…they weren't normal. They had abilities and powers that defied belief, hiding from others and healing ungodly wounds almost as if they were performing miracles.

Almost as if they were performing _magic_.

He needed to know more about them, and in the process find out what in the world was trying to kill _him._ The image of the way Gordon lay crumpled on the ground in a pool of his own blood repeatedly flashed in front of his mind. Harry sure as all hell didn't want to end up like that.

But how was he supposed to ask anyone for help when no one would believe him? That left him with only one option. One place where, like Miss Roemmele had told him in that playground, in stories and myth he could perhaps find some truth.

And so off he went, to the London Library.

As he walked past the scowling librarian and into the chamber proper, he couldn't help but be intimidated by the sheer vastness of the knowledge contained in the rows upon rows of bookshelves that stood tall in front of him. Taking a deep breath, he told himself to relax.

'Even if I don't find many answers, at least I'm sure to get my INT leveled up a bit,' he thought.

The first few books he picked up were based on the last memory he had before blacking out. All he remembered was the blurry image of a stone with some strange markings on them, so he picked up three books from the Ancient Languages section and headed over to the reading tables with them.

Luckily, it didn't take him more than a couple more trips to the bookshelves to strike gold.

As Harry walked around the bookshelves to pick up his fourth batch of books, a strange, thin little book caught his eyes. On its spine were engraved symbols and squiggles that looked eerily similar to the ones he remembered on the stone. Frowning, he went over and looked at the spine of the book.

"Ancient Languages of the Rare Kind."

The book seemed to contain lots of knowledge about old languages like Ancient Greek, Old Norse, Latin, Sanskrit and even some Scandinavian runes. Harry sat down in the library with the book in front of him. He was pretty sure that reading the book would also help his INT along with helping solve the mystery of the stone. Taking Gordon's advice to heart, he started focusing on the book, hoping to build up his stats in the process. It was boring, and it was certainly not the best thing to do with this extremely rare Dursley free day, but it was what needed to happen.

It was difficult though. The words blurred and danced around on the page, and he could never really get them to focus in front of his eyes. Eventually, rather tired, he gave up on the reading for a while and started looking at pictures that were printed in the books.

But just then, he came upon a picture of an ancient Mesopotamian parchment filled with squiggly lines written on it. It seemed old, really old, and just as Harry was about to look away the words started to change and suddenly Harry could understand them.

He frowned, wondering if this was something related to Gamer's Mind. It hadn't mentioned being able to do anything with languages in its description though, so it seemed unlikely that it was the reason behind his sudden understanding of what the tablet seemed to call the Parseltongue, the language of snakes. It spoke of how it was once the language of gods and how it eventually came to be scorned by all of wizardkind.

'Wait a minute. _Wizardkind_?!' Harry thought disbelievingly. Was that what his Chemistry teacher was? A Wizard?

Was he a wizard too? It would certainly be a crazy theory, but no crazier than all that had happened to him throughout the last few days. Even the Shield of Lily description mentioned it. Maybe he had a connection with those myths he kept hearing about, and maybe it had something to do with magic!

Ping!

 **For thinking things through and arriving at a logical conclusion you gained +1 Wis!**

Harry blinked and quickly wiped it away.

That was confirmation. He was either a wizard or related to one.

Harry quickly spent the next hour fully immersed in the book, trying to learn anything he could. He was thirsty for all knowledge that could be found in it, although it didn't make it any less funny to see what people thought the parseltongue parchments meant. Like the time they mistook the word 'castle' for some oddly flexible yoga position.

Soon, he got confirmation that his time was well spent, through a couple of notifications.

Ping!

 **By reading books about another language you have gained 1 Int!**

Ping!

 **By reading a manuscript and understanding it completely you have gained two skills!**

 **Language: Parseltongue, Lv-MAX**

 **You have a perfect understanding of parseltongue.**

 **Language: Modern English, Lv-2 (34%)**

 **You have poor English reading skills, you can talk it, but can't walk it. Reading level-1**

 **-60% misunderstanding what you read.**

Harry scratched his head, this was a problem. While some sort of strange magic gave him a perfect understanding of this…Parseltongue, his English wasn't in that great of a shape. He could talk English just fine, but he had always had an issue with reading it. Books always got so blurry when he tried to read. Pictures were okay, but the text being all but a grey blob wasn't exactly conducive to a reading session. Whatever the reason behind it was, he needed to get better at English first before reading any book.

Harry quickly went over to the Basic English sections and took out easy books and began reading.

Grinding. That was what he was doing.

Focusing on leveling up a skill with all his effort and intent led to a quick increase in level growth, and as the blobs of grey slowly became more and more focused and eventually morphed into letters he could understand. After finishing his fourth English book of the day, Harry opened up his skill list and selected English.

 **Language: Modern English, Lv-2 (80%)**

 **You have poor English reading skills, you can talk it, but can't walk it. Reading grade level-1**

 **-60% misunderstanding what you read.**

It was 34% before but it had grown to 80%. That meant it was working. Harry then quickly started to grind. He was being given a way to eliminate one of his greatest weaknesses on a day free of Dursleys and chores. He couldn't be happier to take the chance with all his might.

By mid-noon, Harry had progressed to reading Conan Doyle stories, which were notoriously long but seemed to have a knack for increasing his English Levels due to their smart writing.

 **Language: Modern English, Lv-5 (40%)**

 **You have poor English reading skills, you can talk it, but can't walk it. Your reading is now better, grade level-4**

 **-45% misunderstanding what you read.**

Harry smiled and closed the last book he was reading. Other than the Dursleys, his messed up reading was one of the main reasons he was always merely average in the class, and he was more than happy to be rid of it. As far as he could see, his understanding improved by a rate of 5%, meaning at level 14 or so he would finally be rid of his problem forever.

Soon after, Harry ended his grinding for the day and left, as the library was closing for lunchtime.

* * *

After spending some time ambling through the street, Harry saw a small garden snake slithering across the street as it angrily hissed at the pedestrians that kept almost trampling it. Except to Harry, it seemed as if the snake wasn't merely hissing.

It was speaking English. Some extremely vulgar English, but English nonetheless.

Harry's eyes widened when a small green window popped up in his corner of vision telling him that his Parseltongue skill was active. He quickly weaved through the crowd over to the snake and picked it up gently.

The snake didn't seem to be too pleased with that development.

" _Put me down you grubby son of a maggot lodged scum bucket! I will rip off your slimy little two-legged nose and shove it up your lily white butt you little miff backed moron. I have contacts in high places! The Prime Minister's garden snakes are my friends. I could have you thrown in a ditch with a flick of my tail. I will make you rue the day you picked me up you dim-witted little twit-"_

" _Language"_ Harry interrupted the snake as he took it to a nearby alleyway.

" _You speak! "_ The snake said, seemed a little shocked.

" _I do_ ," Harry said bemusedly as he set the snake down away from the trampling traffic of people on the other side of the street.

" _Then you should understand perfectly when I tell you to bugger off you little wimp. Fucking snake speakers thinking themselves to be the king of reptiles for being able to talk like proper snakes."_ The snake spat as it slithered off into a hole.

Harry paused for a minute to scratch his head at what just happened, wondering if he should've been offended, before shrugging it off and continuing on his journey back home, swiftly dissolving into the crowd.

* * *

Harry reached the neighborhood near Privet Drive to find it burning with sweltering heat. Looking around, he saw that all the shops were closed and there was no place to find shade. Deciding that he wasn't feeling like fainting and taking yet another trip to the hospital, Harry made up his mind and headed towards the park.

He quickly found a secluded spot near a corner shaded by the thick trees and sat down on the bench after making sure no one was looking at him. He couldn't help but marvel at how peaceful it was without all the people in it. Closing his eyes, he let himself be immersed in the sounds of the animals, who were in the park seeking shade from the sun just like he was. He slowly let himself relax a bit, and finally, after a long time, Harry felt at peace.

Ping!

"Oh what now?!" he angrily snapped and sat up to look at the strange new window that had opened up in front of him.

 **You have entered the wards of Privet Drive! Due to Home Turf you have gained a boost!**

 **1000 HP**

 **1000 MP**

 **All wounds are healed**

 **All ailments cured**

Harry blinked confusedly as he read and re-read the box, only to find himself repeatedly wondering what in the world was going on with him. This couldn't be normal, not even if he was a wizard like he had earlier theorized. There was no way that staying nearby one's home could give anyone that much power. Pier Polkiss didn't turn into superman when he ran home to mommy. So what was doing this to him?

Frustrated, Harry brought up his profile and looked at the various question marks that were scattered around it.

 **Race-?**

 **Harry Potter is a ?, the son of LilyPotter and ?. He has bad eyesight making it difficult for him to do well in class. His has gotten him trouble over the years in various schools. Strange things seem to happen around him. Harry is unaware of who he is, and wishes to find meaning in his life. Harry loves his mother, and hates the Dursleys.**

The 'Race-?' was scary. He _was_ human wasn't he? What else could he be? A wizard? Was he some sort of freak or something like his Aunt and Uncle always told him?

Harry looked at the question mark over his father's name and over his race. The strange ability he got when inPrivet Drive, the parseltongue stuff he could read and the weird stuff that happened around him all the time. What could it all mean?

' _Come on Harry, you must be able to think of a reason_ ,' Harry remembered Ms. Roemmele saying that to him in his classes. She always did seem to believe in him before she turned to weird magical death cults.

A wizard…that couldn't be it….could it?

Harry sighed and gave up on it for the moment. The heat was too much right now and he wasn't in the mood for a mental breakdown. He shelved his thoughts for later perusal that night in his cupboard and started using observe on the strangers walking by just to grind his skill when suddenly Lady Luck seemed to smile on him.

 **Dedalus Diggle**

 **Lv-28**

 **HP-1500/1500**

 **MP-2000/2000**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-15**

 **Vit-15**

 **Dex-10**

 **Int-22**

 **Wis-20**

 **Luc-10**

 **Dedalus Diggle is a member of the Council of Magical Sports and The Order of Phoenix. He along with Emmeline Vance is assigned to protect Harry in case any dark wizards come after him. He is assigned to look after Harry by the Order and will do so until told otherwise. He is in love with his wife and has three children.**

Harry's eyes widened. It was true! Wizards were real! That was the answer! But what did that mean? Did this Diggle guy live like those wizards in stories? With pointy hats and brooms? And what was that Order of the Phoenix thing that was the title of Ms. Roemmele? So was it an organization of some sort? What was going on?

And what did it mean if that was true? It did make sense. Why else would some wizards be here other than to protect him, another wizard just like them? Ms. Roemmele…Vance did join the school a few days after Harry arrived.

Then Harry's eyes widened suddenly as it hit him like a wave on an ocean. His dad and mum must have been wizard and…girl-wizard? Witch? And they certainly didn't die in a car accident! This explained it all…this was his answer…but he still had doubts creeping into his mind.

'Surely not. Surely this is just the stuff of legends and stories. Surely this couldn't be real,' he thought.

 _Ms. Roemmele narrowed her eyes, 'don't be too sure Mr. Potter_

Ping!

 **Due to you using your head and thinking things through and fitting all the pieces of the puzzles together you have gained 1 Wis!**

Ping!

 **Quest Completed!**

 **Find out who you are**

 **Reward,**

 **Find out about all your abilities.**

 **1000 Exp**

Ping!

 **You have gained two levels!**

Eyes widening, Harry then quickly pulled his stats up and was shocked at what he saw;

 **Harry Potter**

 **Health-1200/1200(Due to home turf)**

 **Mana-1100/1100(Due to home turf)**

 **The Gamer**

 **Title-The Boy who Lived**

 **(20 Str,20 Vit, 20 Dex, while in Home Turf)**

 **Level-4 Exp-0/1200**

 **Race-wizard**

 **STR-2(+20)=22**

 **VIT-1(+20)=21**

 **DEX-3(+20)=23**

 **INT-3**

 **WIS-4**

 **LUC-3**

 **POINTS-10**

 **MONEY- 500G0S0K**

 **Harry Potter is a wizard, the son of Lily Potter and ?. He has bad eyesight making it difficult for him to do well in class. His magic has gotten him trouble over the years in various schools. Strange things seem to happen around him. Harry is unaware of who he is, and wishes to find meaning in his life. Harry hates the Dursleys.**

 **Status- wizard, giving Harry - 2 VIT, 2 DEX and the ability to control magic, talk to snakes, control his appearance and look cool**.

"Holy shit," Harry muttered in wonder. His HP and MP were off the charts! All this for just being in Privet Drive! And his Str, Dex, Vit were all in the 20's! This proved it, he was a wizard! He clicked the new title he got, 'The Boy who Lived' and saw that the bonuses were only when he was in 'home turf' in Privet Drive, which while rare, still gave him a huge boost!

Suddenly, Harry realized that while he'd been thinking, the purple-shirted wizard had walked off. He quickly jumped to his feet and walked out of the park, glad to see a glimpse of the purple shirt in the distance. Destiny had given him a chance to learn his truth, and he wasn't about to give it up without a fight.

He took a deep breath and then started pumping his legs into the floor, sprinting as fast as he could. Harry focused and regulated his breath to preserve his stamina. Gamer's Mind came into effect calming him down as he expertly dodged bystanders with his new found home turf DEX boost.

Harry Potter was good at running after all. And now he knew why.

Ping!

 **Skill created!**

 **Sprinting, Lv-5 (40%)**

 **Your speed in sprinting is that of an average sprinter-8 miles an hour.**

Harry looked at that, fumbling slightly mid-run, and frowned. Amongst the skills he had expected to gain, he had expected his sprinting to be a lot higher levelled than that. Dismissing it, he kept running, and since he was trying not to be detected, he kept running in a random zigzag pattern along the streets, taking cover behind as many pedestrians and obstacles as he could to maximize his cover and do a cheeky bit of grinding in the process. Throughout it all, he kept trying to move faster and faster.

Ping! Ping! Ping! Ping!

The pings kept on coming but Harry ignored them all. He needed to go faster, since the man had turned from the side street they were in onto the main road and Harry was about to lose sight of him. He needed to get faster or he would lose the only thing that could get him answers.

With that in mind, Harry scanned the street for any path that he could use to avoid the traffic and still keep an eye on his target.

Nothing. There were no by-pass lanes and nor were there any little pathways between buildings he could sneak through. There was no way he could follow him on ground.

The only way to go was up.

He caught sight of a steel bar jutting out of the side of a half-constructed building that ran along the main road. Using his new-found DEX boost, Harry ran full speed straight towards the wall and jumped, grabbing hold of the bar. Almost instinctively, he swung his weight around, letting go of the bar mid-swing, only to catch hold of a window rail. With each push and jump, he climbed the building, aided by his Home Turf STR and DEX. Reveling in his newfound power, he grabbed hold of a ledge above the topmost window and pulled himself up, his muscles slightly protesting under the strain they were put under. He then shimmied along the ledge till he reached a small jutting out brick on which he gained some footing.

Just as he had stabilized himself and was taking a breather, he felt the brick start to give way under his weight. Eyes widening, he braced himself and with all his might jumped, grasping at anything he could find. Luckily, his hands found the edge of the roof and with a grimace, he pulled himself onto it.

And just in time, it seemed.

Ping!

 **You have exited the wards of Privet Drive. All home turf boosts negated**

Harry thanked whichever God it was that was looking after him before he saw the screen that had been floating in front of him all this time.

 **Sprinting, Lv-10 (30%)**

 **Your speed in sprinting is that of an advanced sprinter-15 miles an hour.**

'Well at least there's that,' Harry thought as he started moving on, marking Dedalus Diggle from his vantage point path along the rooftops of the closely packed buildings. He tried to avoid the eyes of anyone who could've thought him suspicious and tried to use Gamer's Mind to judge where the man was going.

Harry knew enough of London to tell that they were heading towards Greater London, but he wasn't intimately familiar with the area.

He quickly dropped down to the lower roof of the next building and was about to run ahead when he suddenly caught sight of Diggle entering a small pretty shop that, strangely enough, most people on the footpath seemed to be avoiding. Harry quickly entered the rooftop entrance to the stairwell of the building he was on and ran down the stairs and out onto the street, only to see Diggle disappear behind a curtain around the back of the shop through the shop's window.

Harry ran across the street and entered the shop, pulling forth his innocent 'lost child' guise, and quietly walked to the backside, wondering why the lady at the counter didn't stop him, only to stop short himself as he saw the scene in front of him.

A row of people were lining up in front of a fireplace that seemed to burn green fire for some reason!

Just as he was about to wonder why, much to Harry's shock, an old gentleman entered the fire. And despite his misgivings, the fire didn't even burn his clothes! The old man simply yelled "Aventoville!" and the fire seemed to engulf him. When the flames receded, he had disappeared.

Harry was floored! But soon enough, Gamer's mind asserted itself, and he pulled himself together and used observe on the fireplace.

 **Floo Fireplace**

 **A fireplace connected to the floo network. It is a mode of transportation in the wizarding world in which a wizard or witch goes from one place to another by standing in the emerald green flames and saying the name of the place very clearly.**

"Bloody Hell!" Harry muttered, wide-eyed, "Wizards traveled through fire! That is so cool!"

He looked around but he couldn't find Diggle. Just as he was starting to get distressed, he saw a lady collecting some silver coins from the people before they stepped in. A plan formed in his mind.

He walked over to the lady, a Miss Becklew according to the box floating above her, and spoke in a childish voice,

"Exshcuse me mish. My uncle just went into the floo and he shaid that I could come on my own if I wis-wished cos I am a grown up now. Bu-but I forgot what to say when I'm in the fire. "

In normal situations, a usual 11 years old might not have succeeded in this amateurish deception, but Harry's small stature worked in his favor. The lady seemed to almost melt over his glasses and wide green eyes as she cooed over him as she asked "Aww. Do you remember your Uncle's name little man?"

"De-Ded-Dudlush Diggul." Harry said, adding a stutter for effect. At the moment, he was frankly surprised at his own acting skills.

"Dedalus, he did mention his nephew was coming over." The woman muttered as she checked the paper she was holding for the name.

"Charing Cross little man, think you can remember that?" she asked, and Harry nodded. "Yes? Good. Now go stand in the line and go through when your turn comes. Got that? Now scoot!" She said with a smile.

Harry walked towards the end of the line and tried not to feel bad about lying to the nice lady. He didn't quite succeed.

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up!**

 **Lying, Lv-2 (30%)**

 **This is your ability to lie to people, the higher the level the better the lie and less chance of discovery!**

 **10% chance of success, less based on how extreme the lie is.**

He was getting better at lying and he didn't know how to feel about it. On one hand, he was improving a skill, and on the other hand, he was improving _lying._ Deciding to look on the bright side, Harry waved away the screen and started reading the various signs all around the room.

Much to his surprise…

Ping! Ping!

 **Language: Modern English, Lv-7 (40%)**

 **You have poor English reading skills, you can talk it, but can't walk it. Your reading is now better, grade level-6**

 **-35% in understanding what you read.**

He frowned. That was quite odd. Why did he level up so quickly when all he did was read a few signs? Perhaps there was some kind of magic involved. Or perhaps his own Game was more forgiving in a location filled with wizards. Harry sighed. It could be just random luck for all he knew. Deciding to not look a gift horse in the mouth, he fell into line and waited.

His turn came soon, and Harry, more nervous than he expected, stepped into the flickering green flames and squeezing his eyes shut, yelled his destination loudly. The flames flared up around him, and the last thing he knew before the tickling fire whooshed him away was the amused snickers of the people in line behind him. He passed through an ethereal black space with many green specks of light whizzing by him as he headed towards one particular spot of light that grew and grew and grew until it enveloped his entire world.

With a loud bang, he shot out of a fireplace and landed face first on the floor.

He quickly picked himself up, tried smoothening his hair and looked around, trying to spot Diggle. Soon enough, he spotted him on the opposite side of the road in a shop, browsing through the shelves. Ducking by the other patrons in this new shop he found himself in, he went out into Charing Cross road and sat down on the steps of a nearby shop that was closed, waiting for Diggle to come out.

It didn't take him long to get bored of staring at Diggle. To amuse himself, he started playing with his inventory. He didn't have much money, just 50£, but he had plans to fix that. The money would help him move about and come to London more, and that in turn would lead to more skills and powers revealing themselves and making him more powerful. Perhaps he could find some quests would allow him to get some cash or something if that was even possible.

Just then the stone Harry had been fiddling with fell from his hands. But before it could clatter onto the ground, the inventory that he had left open underneath caught it.

Harry paused and considered the implications. This could be incredibly useful. If his inventory could catch stones without him having to individually put them in, then maybe it could capture something more…dangerous. Maybe even bullets.

His inventory box could possibly be the most powerful tool in his arsenal. Harry was curious about his powers, out of all which his inventory stumped him the most. What exactly happened to the stuff he put in there? Where did it go? He definitely needed to know.

So Harry took out a loaf of bread that he had stashed in his in the inventory two days ago. Much to his surprise, it was just as fresh as it was the day he put it in there. That meant that the inventory box was a type of stasis field. Anything in it was frozen in time, something that could be very _very_ useful.

Harry was almost drooling imagining it. Hot food whenever he wanted! For Harry, to whom starvation was an intimate friend, this was huge!

Ping!

 **Due to your experimentation, you have found a loophole in the system! Your Int is raised by 1!**

Harry smiled at this and looked back at Diggle. He needed to move since Diggle had paid at the counter and was coming out of the shop.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Follow Diggle without getting caught!**

 **Reward,**

 **50 Exp**

 **10G**

 **Failure,**

 **Cupboard**

 **Ignorance of self**

 **YES/NO?**

It was a no-brainer. He was already doing it anyway. Harry quickly pressed yes and crossed the road, tailing Diggle, sticking to the shadows and trying not to get noticed. Each time he felt that Diggle had even an inkling of an idea that he was being followed, Harry quickly ducked into an alleyway out of sight. Staying careful, Harry slowly started decreasing the distance between them.

Ping!

"What now?" he hissed through his teeth.

 **Skill created!**

 **Sneaking, Lv-1 (20%)**

 **Allows you to sneak up on someone.**

 **10% chance of not getting caught.**

 **10% chance of a critical strike.**

That seemed very useful, Harry decided. He swiped the screen away and saw Diggle looking around with a frown on his face. Harry stilled, realizing that Dedalus sensed someone following him. Thinking quickly, he quickly walked past him, overtaking him and ducking into the next side alley, before looking back to see what he was doing.

He might've been sneaky, but 10% was still 10% after all. He was bound to fail sometime.

Dedalus pulled out a stick with his right hand just like the one Vance and the others had; a magic wand; and was discreetly waving it at the area behind him while looking aroun. After a few tense seconds, he started walking again, apparently satisfied with his inspection. He passed Harry's alley without noticing him, and with a sigh of relief, he walked out of the alley and started following the purple shirted man again.

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up!**

 **Sneaking, Lv-2 (10%)**

 **Allows you to sneak up on someone.**

 **15% chance of not getting caught.**

 **15% chance of a critical strike.**

'Nice,' he thought and hung back and followed Diggle at a discreet distance, mingling with the crowd and sticking to the shadows.

And so he tailed Dedalus Diggle all the way along the Charing Cross Road, where the stout man entered a dingy looking pub, which the rusty sign called 'The Leaky Cauldron', which, much like those FLOO shops, most people seemed to avoid entirely. Their eyes seemed to gloss over it and onto the next store whenever they looked at it. Warily, Harry followed him and looked through the stained and dirty glass windows of the pub and saw the patrons greet him as he vanished towards the back of the pub.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Follow Diggle without getting caught!**

 **Reward,**

 **50 Exp**

 **10G**

 **Information**

Harry swiped it away. He didn't have time to look at it now.

He didn't dare go inside. He was 10 after all and a pub full of drunk men was not the best place to be for someone like him. So he stood outside the pub and waited for him to come out since he couldn't observe anyone through the glass no matter how hard he tried.

Or so he intended to do until a man walked out of the pub, opening the door for a fleeting moment, letting the conversation inside spill out. His Gamer's Mind separated all the voices and with crystal clear clarity, he heard,

"How are you Arch-"

"A bottle of firewhiskey Tom!"

"The ministry is taking a big fat dump on all over wizards and witches ever-"

"Lily Potter's son coming to Hogwarts this year isn't he Matil-" The woman's voice was cut off as the door closed.

Harry was shocked to a standstill. He looked around, knowing that he couldn't open the door himself, he desperately hoped for something . . . anything to open the door. Suddenly, a strong breeze came and blew open the door as a brown screen popped up.

Ping!

 **New Skill discovered! You have discovered your skill as a magical!**

 **Accidental Magic Lv-1 (43%)**

 **Allows you to control your magic in short sporadic bursts. You can try to use it in any way you wish but it may not obey your every command.**

 **Cost-20 MP per minute**

 **30% chance of Harry using a randomly selected magical ability when in a situation of great distress**

Harry couldn't care less at that moment.

"Aye. I tell ya Jemma, James and his friends were big troublemakers in my day. If little Harry is anything like him. . ."

"True that. Though he cleaned up pretty nicely when he got together with Lily."

"Aye that woman could clean up anybody. True spitfire she was."

"I heard from Minerva that poor Harry is growing up with muggles. The Boy Who Lived! Muggles!"

"The poor lad. Must be hard for him. Lily was a good mother to him for the time he had her."

"Her eyes used to light up like tho-"

Harry used a foot to keep the door open and remained outside that dingy pub till sunset, thoughts of Mr. Diggle all forgotten. He stood there, mindless of the pain in his legs as he listened to the patrons talk about his parents and magic and their school times, soaking in all he could about his mother and father and the life that he never had.

Despite the tears streaming down his face, it was the happiest day of his entire life.

* * *

 **I always did have a soft spot in my heart for this chapter, especially for the ending, so I hope you like what I've done with it. There were a LOT of issues with it, so I had to fix it up. I took some time off writing and finished the plot planning and framework of Book 3, just cos I was feeling inspired. That scene with Vance in the last chapter really got me going. More updates coming tomorrow.**

 **P.S. Did you notice that Dedalus told the Floo Lady that his nephew was coming? ;-)**

 **P.P.S. If you see any issues with the chapter, grammatical or otherwise, do let me know. I try my best, but I am just one guy after all. :-)**


	4. Book-I:Carrowing Times

Chapter 3:

With an angry frown on his face, Harry stood in the garden at the spot near the rose bush where he had fainted on Sunday. After reaching home much later than he had planned the previous day -resulting in the Dursleys arriving earlier than him- Aunt Petunia had promptly grounded him, given him a list of chores to make up for the days he was gone, and told him to clean up the mess that Dudley's party had caused.

It wasn't ideal, but what was he supposed to do? Leave early from the only place that he had ever gotten any real knowledge about his parents from?

It said something about his situation that drunk patrons in a run-down pub in central London were better at being kind to him than his own Aunt Petunia _without even knowing_ that they were being kind to him.

But chores were fine by Harry so long as they got his family out of his hair since all he really wanted to do was get to the garden and find out what had hurt him that day. And after the last day's revelation, he decided, a little monotony would not go unappreciated.

Thus, he spent most of his morning out in the garden searching through the grass around the area, trying to find that stone marked with strange little squiggles that had knocked him out and drained his mana. Yet no matter how much he searched, he was unable to find it. Sighing with resignation after a while of searching, he went about getting ready for school.

Class, to him, was as monotonous as always, but after the previous day's hijinks, he could finally read and collect information at a fast enough rate for him to keep up with the stuff that was being taught. So, as a pleasant surprise at the end of the first half of classes, he got a ping from the Game.

 **Due to you paying attention in class, for the first bloody time, you have gained 1 INT!**

Harry was rather pleased with himself for getting those extra stat points and the fact that he had actually managed to read with relative ease throughout the day.

His English reading skills now only affected him by -35%, meaning that he understood 65% of what was being taught. It also meant that he wouldn't have to go over the day's work in his cupboard again just to understand it, which opened up another couple of hours of free time for him. Free time he could use to discover his skills and grind them.

Soon, lunchtime rolled around, and Harry decided to test out his new powers. So far he knew of only one skill he got for being a wizard, accidental magic, whose success rate seemed pretty…accidental. There were still some other powers, like talking to snakes, which he had done.

The Snake-Talking thing seemed to be pretty cut and dry. He had Max levels in Parseltongue, so he didn't have any need to grind that particular skill. And even if he wanted to, he doubted any snake would stay alive in the inter-neighbor garden warfare that reigned in Privet Drive.

So that left him with accidental magic as the only thing he could practice.

Making sure that no one was looking at him, Harry stood up and walked over to a hidden off part of the playground, taking cover behind the small section of the school wall that jutted out into the grounds, secluding that little spot as just the place to be if you wanted to be alone. Sitting down on the floor, he took a deep breath as centered himself, closed his eyes, and focused on the feeling of desperation he had felt when he'd last done his accidental magic.

He'd wanted to hear more about his mother so badly…he would've done anything for more, and the wind had responded. Gamer's Mind flawlessly recalled to the forefront to his mind that unyielding desire to make something happen. For the longest while there was nothing, but Harry suddenly felt a knot tying up in the pit of his stomach and…

His hand felt warm.

He slowly opened his eyes and looked at his palm. A tiny blue flame fluttered gently over his palm, flickering and shivering at even the slightest of movements.

A small breeze seemed to pass, quickly snuffing out the flame. But it couldn't snuff out the wide grin on Harry's face. Far from being discouraged at the measly nature of his feat, he was overjoyed.

Magic was real. Magic was his friend.

He quickly refocused and tried to replicate the feeling in his belly, this time calling to the forefront of his mind the feeling of flames washing over his skin from the time he had Floo traveled. This time, his whole arm lit up on fire…yet it didn't burn him. He felt the fire flickering and dancing warm around his arms…like a happy little puppy bouncing around him waiting to be told what to do.

He felt his Gamer's mind take note of how it felt to use his magic, saving it for later use. He knew it'd be easier the next time he did it.

Suddenly, he felt quite aware of the sweat forming on his brow. He panted as he brought out his status page and clicked on MP. This was the first skill he had that required MP and he didn't want to run out. Not after his fainting spell the last time.

 **Mana-680/1100 (1000 Due to home turf)**

 **Regeneration-10% per minute**

Harry's eyes widened as he remembered about his home turf boost. It looked like he could practice to his heart's content as long as he stayed inside a range around Privet Drive. But then he frowned, noting disappointedly his regeneration rate was pathetic.

It was to be expected since his Wis was only 4. However, if he was caught off guard by someone…especially someone who wanted to kill him like Ms. Roemmele had mentioned…outside Privet Drive, he would be a goner.

No. He had to get better and improve his base stats.

Through the next bout of practicing, Harry learned a few things more about his powers and statistics. Each indicated something or the other about his current state of being.

 **Str- his physical strength, obviously.**

 **Vit- his endurance and defence (25 HP per level for 10 Vit)**

 **Dex- his athleticism and precision (10% HP regen per level for 10 Dex)**

 **Int- Mana storage rate and memory (25 MP per level for 10 Int)**

 **Wis- Mana recovery and mana scene (10% MP regen level for 10 Wis)**

 **Luc- Luck**

And so far he only had the base stats at,

 **STR-2**

 **VIT-1**

 **DEX-3**

 **INT-5**

 **WIS-4**

 **LUC-3**

Which, if he compared to that Dedalus Diggle guy, was next to nothing. This was why Harry needed to grind. He did have 10 points that he could spend, but like Gordon said, he needed to save those for a rainy day.

One more time, he thought to himself, and gathered mana into his arms, this time with much more ease than before, and then spoke with a grin, "Flame on!"

He expected a fireball forming in his hands, and maybe even a level up screen for his magic. Hence, he was quite surprised when a nearby trashcan turned neon pink and blasted into the air, upturning mid-way down to the ground and dumping all its contents on Harry's head.

30% random. Right.

* * *

A fair amount of practicing later, Harry collapsed to the ground, having exhausted all of his mana.

 **Mana-0/100**

The recovery time for him would a total of 8 minutes since his recovery rate was 10%, meaning 10 MP was being restored per minute. He did wonder why he wasn't fainting at 0 MP like he had on Sunday.

"It must be something related to that stone that knocked me out," he mused.

After a couple of minutes of rest, Harry got up and was about to get back to his class, when he saw Dudley and his gang of delinquent bullies coming towards him with grins on their faces. Harry knew that nothing good was going to come out of this. While he could take those idiots out easily with his increased stats, he knew that if Dudley tattled on him, he would be starving for days locked up in his cupboard. And he wanted to avoid that at all costs.

So turning on his heels, Harry ran.

The playground monitor was off snoring on a bench on the playground, so he didn't notice the bullies and their target run out of the school campus. Not wanting to give away his abilities, he purposefully ran slower than he could, but that only meant that Dudley and his gang could keep up with him. Soon, they chased him into an alleyway nearby the school.

Harry realized he was cornered when he saw the dead end. He couldn't see any ledges or supports he could to climb and escape. Without much of a way out, he started to feel the panic seeping into his mind. How was he supposed to find out more about his parents while locked in a cupboard?! How could he search for that stone?! How would he grind his skills?!

No. No. Calm down, he told himself. There has to be some way out, he thought as he used Gamer's mind to focus on solving the problem. Meanwhile, Dudley and his minions were closing in on him, cracking their fists menacingly.

"So you thought you could just ruin my birthday and get off with it?" Dudley asked angrily, "I'll give you what's coming to you freak!"

"I'm not getting off Dudley," Harry replied, utterly calm on the outside, "Aunt Petunia is making me do all the chores in the house. And it is not as if I _wanted_ to faint while working in the sun."

"Enough talk Big D! Let's do this!" Piers apparently had had enough. With a dirty look at Harry, he pulled out a switchblade and started walking towards Harry.

"Whoa! Hold on mate! Piers!" Dennis didn't seem to be so sure about the plan once he saw the knife, "Where did you get that knife, man?"

"My dad gave it to me before he left for the army. Said his trainer gave it to him. Pretty cool huh," Piers said proudly.

The rest of the gang was starting to hesitate, and Malcolm decided to voice his apprehension, "I don't know man, what if he tells on us."

"Nah. Not likely. And if he does, I'll just get Mum to handle him." Dudley reassured them with a grin.

They seemed mollified with that as wide grins spread over their faces, and they too joined Piers in advancing towards Harry and cutting off any escape routes.

Harry looked around desperately, trying to find something. There had to be a way out! There had to be something he could use! The desperation was truly starting to set in, when suddenly, a knot formed his stomach. He stumbled as he twisted and the next thing he knew everything went black; he was pressed very hard from all directions; he could not breathe, there were iron bands tightening around his chest; his eyeballs were being forced back into his head; his ear-drums were being pushed deeper into his skull. He felt like he had been dragged through a keyhole as his vision then reoriented itself.

'Huh,' Harry muttered, looking around confused and dazed. He was on the roof of the school building. Looking down the ledge into the alleyway he was just in, he saw Dudley and his friends staring at the spot he was in with shock.

"What in the world just happened?" Harry whispered.

Ping!

 **Due to constant usage skill has evolved!**

 **Accidental Magic Lv-2 (3%)**

 **Allows you to control your magic in short sporadic bursts. You can try to use it in anyway you wish but it may not obey your every command.**

 **24% chance of Harry using a randomly selected magical ability with in a situation of great distress.**

 **Cost-20 MP per minute**

Ping!

 **New Skill discovered! You have discovered a new magical skill by accidental magic!**

 **Apparition Lv-1 (54%)**

 **Destination, Determination, and Deliberation. Apparition is a magical method of transportation and is basically the magical action of traveling by having the user focus on the desired location in their mind. It is by far the fastest way to get to one's desired destination, but is tricky to pull off correctly and disastrous if botched up.**

 **Cost-80 MP per use**

"Oh," Harry muttered as he read through the description. He was quite lucky he didn't 'botch it' as the description put it. But this was an amazing skill.

Harry was marveling at the jackpot he'd hit when he heard numerous pops near the entrance of the school. He turned around and caught sight of two men appearing out of nowhere. Eyes widening, he quickly ducked behind a chimney to see what was going on. Luckily, they seemed to be just as callous about lowering their voices around people as the last set of wizards he had encountered in his school. He could hear them clearly as they spoke.

"All right Stephens, get to it. It's an easy job, just a bunch of kids. Even the playground monitor guy is sleeping. I want to see you handle yourself well. Blending in with muggles is a useful skill. Keep your training in mind, and don't forget that field tests like this will determine your future as an Obliviator. Now, are you ready to begin?"

"Yes, sir," Stephens said as he pulled out his wand.

"Good. Be careful with the kids. Erase only as much as necessary, they'll chalk the rest up to their imagination. And don't bother finding the source. It was probably some muggleborn getting scared or something." The older looking man, a Jonathon Mertickle who had an astounding level of 38, said.

Harry watched silently as Stephens quickly pointed his wand at each of the kids one by one and intoned "Obliviate". The kids each then stilled for a brief second, and then went about playing like nothing had ever happened.

'This is the same thing that man…Miss Roemmele's friend from that day said after he said all that stuff about me not remembering anything that had happened,' Harry remembered with vindication. He _knew_ that the magic had something to do with erasing memories.

But then he stilled.

So did that mean that weird stuff like this had always happened around him, and every time it had, someone had come and erased his memories? Harry felt a bit sick at the thought.

The two men soon finished their memory erasing and met back up near the gates again.

"Good job kid. Now let's get back to the ministry. Bagman owes me some Quidditch League passes. Wanna tag along?"

"Heck yeah boss." The younger man said enthusiastically as they both turned on the spot and vanished.

Harry had barely started to understand what he'd just witnessed when he heard the class bell ring. Quickly checking and seeing all of his classmates on the field, Harry dropped down onto the ledge of his classroom window, and with some effort, climbed into the classroom. Checking that no one had seen him, he quickly went and sat down in his seat.

As he doodled on his notebook during class, he thought about what he had seen, arriving at a conclusion.

Wizards seemed to have a very neat and efficient system that they used to cover stuff up in case someone, child or otherwise, did magic out in public. That seemed to be how they hid their existence from the rest of the world. And that meant that he couldn't just use up large amounts of magic out in public without someone somewhere knowing about it and coming for him.

One thing was for sure. He was being watched in ways he couldn't even comprehend.

* * *

Throughout the remaining school time and on the way back home, Harry had maintained a tiny flickering flame in his hand, constantly changing its color to make sure that his skills were being constantly honed and bettered. There was a lot to be improved about his accidental magic skill before he could use it as well as he intended to, but level ups would certainly help him get there.

Ping!

 **Due to constant usage a skill has evolved!**

 **Accidental Magic Lv-4 (30%)**

 **Allows you to control your magic in short sporadic bursts. You can try to use it in any way you wish but it may not obey your every command.**

 **12% chance of Harry using a randomly selected magical ability when in a situation of great distress.**

 **Cost-20 MP per minute**

He'd gotten two level ups by the end of his walk. And the factor of randomness in the use of his skill was going down! Harry smiled. He finally knew how he was going to grow stronger. Practicing day after day, one step at a time, strength would come to him. He couldn't help but wonder what would happen when the randomness factor would reach zero.

Just as he was getting close to home, another notification gave him a pleasant surprise.

Ping!

 **Due to constant usage of Mana and constant Mana regeneration, 1 to Int and Wis.**

This seemed to be only getting better and better. It seemed as if studying and making wise choices weren't the only ways to train Int and Wis.

Seeing aunt Petunia frowning at him through the window, Harry decided that standing in the middle of the road while smiling at thin air wasn't a very normal thing to do, and went into the house, intending to start on the dinner.

Outside, hidden from the outside world by the veil of an invisibility cloak, a pallid frail man in tattered black robes watched him with hungry eyes.

That night, as his punishment, Harry's uncle had told him that he was to have no dinner. However, having learned some seriously world altering truths throughout the course of the last few days, Harry was in no mood to listen to their self-aggrandizing drivel. He promptly flipped them off from under the kitchen counter, stole most of the dinner leftovers by stuffing them into his inventory, and just because he was feeling extra vengeful towards his Aunt for lying to him about his mother, polished their silverware with his own spit.

Judging that to be enough revenge for the one night, Harry went and shut himself in his cupboard. He had no plans to sleep that night.

He had a stone to find after all.

That night, it was time to test out his new Apparation skill. Focusing long and hard on the Dursley garden, and just like he had done with all his magic till then, focusing incredibly hard on his desire to make the Apparation happen, he drew on his mana.

Feeling his mana slowly envelope his body, Harry turned on his spot just like he had seen those wizards do, and hoping to all heavens that he would stay silent, apparated.

If Harry felt that it was slower this time, and even somewhat a bit more comfortable, he was right. Picking up on his desire for silence, his magic had deliberately slowed his apparition down.

When apparating, a wizard left behind him a vacuum of space unoccupied by air. Hence, when the process happened incredibly fast, there would be a bunch of air rushing into the space, trying to fill in the vacated space, and much like in the case of Muggle Fighter Jets, cause a loud pop similar to a localized sonic boom.

Furthermore, in a vacuum, there would be no air pressure to counter human blood pressure, which was the reason why the wizard's blood pressure would try to burst him open like an astronaut without a spacesuit in space.

Summed up, all that would make for a rather painful ride.

However, Harry's slow apparition allowed air to slowly take over the space he vacated, thus removing the sound and the vacuum attributes of normal apparition, making his ride a much quieter and smoother one.

Thus, it was hardly surprising that once Harry landed, he immediately heard a ping.

Ping!

 **Due to constant usage skill has evolved!**

 **Silent Apparition Lv-2 (64%)**

 **Destination, Determination and Deliberation. Apparition is a magical method of transportation and is basically the magical action of traveling by having the user focus on a desired location in their mind. It is by far the fastest way to get to one's desired destination, but is tricky to pull off correctly and disastrous if botched up.**

 **Cost-70 MP per use**

'Bloody Hell!' Harry couldn't help but curse under his breath. His Gamer's Mind abilities were working in conjunction to boost his learning speed like all hell. This apparition jump had not only turned his apparition silent and leveled it up, but it had also decreased the amount of mana it used!

After a moment of gaping, Harry waved it away and started searching for the cause of his fainting again, this time taking a different approach.

Magic.

If the stone was magic and he was magic, then maybe he could…summon it? The logic behind it was iffy, but the logic behind his entire life had been blown to trash since the last few days, so it was worth a try.

He tried Accidental magic, but it didn't quite work as well as expected, so Harry decided that maybe spells were what he needed to give his magic that extra boost.

"Whoosh" Harry whispered as he tried to use his mana to pull the stone out of hiding.

"Come to me you thingamajigger!"

"Alakazam!"

"Accidentalus magickus!"

"Wiggle wiggle wiggle!"

Unfortunately, Harry's attempts at finding some sort of secret summoning spell were unsuccessful, and soon he was forced to resort back to scrounging through the bushes and grass hoping for some clues.

As he was just about to give up, his eyes caught sight of the pile of grass and leaves that sat unassumingly near the back fence of the garden.

Near instantly, his Gamer's Mind made a set of connections in a truly Sherlockian fashion.

Once he'd have passed out on Sunday, his Aunt would've probably been the first one to find him. She would've certainly seen him holding on to or touching the stone, and either afraid or repulsed as usual by anything unusual, she would've tossed it into a nearby pile of garbage. A pile of garbage that hadn't yet been cleaned up, since _he_ hadn't been there since the last few days.

It was scary how much his relatives depended on him just to maintain a normal living standard.

Emboldened by his new theory, he renewed his search efforts, starting with the trash bin in front of the house. Not finding anything there, he turned to the leaf pile near the back of the garden. After ruffling through it for a while, he finally struck gold.

His hand brushed again onto a smooth surface, and Harry's vision suddenly flashed red. He panicked for a moment, afraid that he was going to pass out again, until he realized that his mana wasn't falling.

Warily, he looked at what he was touching.

It was the same stone he remembered, except now he sort of recognized that the squiggly lines as some of the runes he had read about in the book 'Ancient Languages of the Rare Kind'. He used observe on it.

 **Lily Potter's Blood Wardstone**

 **Mana : 5,000,000/5,000,000**

 **Ancient wardstone modified to use Lily Potter's blood to protect those bearing her blood. Center and anchor of Surrey wards. Multiplies supplied power by 50,000 to support the protective spells anchored to it.**

 **Choose one of the following perks.**

 **Forever protected : You will gain a permanent private ward, giving you Home turf boost**

 **Home Sweet Home : Number 4 Privet Drive will gain a permanent ward, protecting it from any adverse influences until you turn 17.**

 **Current Choice: Home Sweet Home**

"Mother of God!" Harry muttered, eyes wide as tennis balls as he looked at the wildly large amount of mana stored in that stone.

His eyes darted down the description to the last line, and his brow folded into a frown. That just wouldn't do. No magic of his was going to be used in protecting the Dursleys. If there was one thing he was sure of, that was it.

Immediately, he changed the perk choice. Three words summed up his choice pretty well.

Screw the Dursleys.

 **Wardstone acquired as a perk!**

 **Grants 1000 HP and 1000 MP when activated it at the cost of -25 MP per minute. All wounds are healed. All ailments cured. 20 Str,20 Vit, 20 Dex.**

This was going to be one of his most useful perks. Harry just knew it. The stone dissolved into his hands as his boosts faded, awaiting his activation command.

Just then Harry caught sight of Mrs. Monroe of Number 8, looking out of her window. She was known by most as the most paranoid harpy of the neighborhood.

Wary to use the Apparition skill again, quickly Harry activated his skill, Sneaking. He quietly walked into his house, thankful for having remembered to open the door, closed it behind him, and went into his bed, unaware of the devastating mistake he had just made.

* * *

Outside, the frail man who had been hidden under a tree outside the house across the road from Harry's was awoken from his nap by a sudden buzz in his hand. All day long, he had been waiting to find a chance opening in the Dursley home wards so that he could get into the house and finish what his master had started all those years ago.

With an angry grunt, he woke up, careful not to let a leg or arm slip out from underneath the Invisibility Cloak he was using as his blanket. He lifted his hand to his face to look at what had awoken him.

It was his wand. Ever since he had gotten to Privet Drive and started keeping an eye on the youngest Potter, the glowing orange light on his wand's tip had been telling him that if he dared step up to the Potter's house, he would be incinerated into fine dust.

Except that light was gone, replaced by a gentle green orb pulsating away happily.

He could only gape at it with wide eyes. How?! How had this happened?! How had the wards guarding Potter gone down?!

The rustling of the grass from the direction of Number Four made him look away from his wand to see what was going on. A crouched Potter slowly sneaked up to the front door of the house, and then promptly slipped into the house before closing the door carefully.

'It's Potter…the kid somehow managed to break his own wards!' he realized with a start, and a wide grin spread across his face.

Irony was a beautiful thing.

A giddy sort of laughter filled the entire street, and Mrs. Monroe looked around curiously, wondering where it was coming from.

* * *

Harry woke up with the same blue box over his head that he'd had the previous morning.

Ping!

 **You have slept in your own bed; HP and MP have been restored 100% each. All ailments and negative status effects have been cured.**

He swiped it away, walked out of his cupboard, and looked around with a yawn. The time was 7 in the morning. Just early enough to finish his chores before school. Stretching a bit to free up his muscles, Harry headed upstairs and took a shower, before heading into the kitchen and starting to work on the breakfast. After making 30 hotcakes, just about enough to fill Dudley and Vernon for a few hours, he changed into his uniform and grabbed his bag.

Suddenly though, he stopped himself. The hotcakes…there was an opportunity there.

Since no one else was awake, Harry quickly pulled out the batter and started making more hotcakes. In addition to that, he quickly pulled out a bottle of maple syrup from the carton-full of the stuff that they kept around for Dudley, knowing they would never miss it.

He made a stack of hotcakes before he opened up his inventory and dragged the box over his newly made stack. He slowly lowered it down the stack. Much to his elation, they all slowly disappeared into the box before the food then reappeared in the inventory in a box. Grinning, Harry quickly loaded in as many pancakes as he could.

Finally, Harry closed his inventory after storing 20 hotcakes in it. He then grabbed two more and put them on his plate to eat, headed over to a corner of the room, and started to quickly devour his breakfast.

"Morning freak." came an ugly voice. Harry sighed and turned, and there he was, sucking in all the light and life from his surroundings. Dudley sneered at Harry.

"Sod off to your mum Dudders." Harry replied flippantly without looking at him.

"At least I have parents," Dudley said, after spending a moment processing Harry's statement, and walked away.

It shouldn't have hurt him. Harry was used to the insults. He was used to the Dursleys telling him he was an orphan, and that was the first thing, anyone, stranger or otherwise, would use to insult him. He should have been used to it by now, but he wasn't.

At least he knew the Dursleys had been lying to him all along. That hate made a fantastic suppression of the sadness.

He quietly looked down at his meal and quickly began to eat, before, on a whim, he used observe on his hotcakes;

 **Hotcakes: food,**

 **Restores 30 HP, 10 MP.**

Harry's eyes widened at that. He placed a hand behind his back and burned a flame for a few minutes to use up some mana, hoping all along that the Dursleys wouldn't notice. He then quickly ate a full hotcake and pulled up his mana bar. Sure enough,

 **Health-200/200**

 **Mana-100/100**

It was amazing, the way reality was so integrated with his Game. Even food affected magic and mana. Perhaps somewhere out there he would one day find food that could restore 100% of his mana and health. It would be an amazing find for sure.

Harry made a mental note of that for his future and then quickly spent the rest of his breakfast using Observe on everything around him hoping to level it up quickly. The more information he could get from observing his enemies the better he could be prepared for whatever this crazy new world would throw at him.

Soon after,

Ping! Ping!

 **Through constant use, a skill has level up!**

 **Observe Lv-4 (40%)**

 **By Observing a target one will get information about said object**

 **Max HP, MP, stats and info.**

'Sweet,' thought Harry as he quickly left the kitchen to get ready for the school.

A few minutes later, just when he had left the premises of Number 4, he suddenly felt an unpleasant tingle run down his spine. Suddenly, his throat dried up, and he froze. Every instinct in his body screamed danger.

Ping!

 **By detecting bloodlust you have gained a new skill.**

 **Detect bloodlust, Lv-1 (20%)**

 **This skill will detect any bloodlust directed at the user. It is an instinctive skill.**

 **Will detect within 20 feet and will tell origin.**

 **Origin of BL- Amycus Carrow wants to kill you.**

Harry's eyes widened, before immediately composed himself and looked around. It wouldn't do to alert whomever it was that wished to kill him that Harry was aware of their presence. This…Amycus Carrow…whoever it was, must've been the one coming after him. The same person who had almost killed Gordon. The same person Ms. Roemmele and those other wizards seemed so worried about.

Harry's eyes scanned every bit of the neighborhood, and even with Gamer's Mind looking for any possible abnormalities in its alerted state, Harry almost didn't spot the rippling spot underneath the shadows of Mrs. Monroe's tree.

Almost.

Trying to remain as inconspicuous as he could, Harry looked intently at the faint ripple, which had almost instantly stilled when he had laid his eyes on it, and whispered under his breath, "Observe."

 **Amycus Carrow Death Eater**

 **Level-39**

 **HP-3900/3900**

 **MP-2600/2600**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-21**

 **Vit-20**

 **Dex-18**

 **Int-28**

 **Wis-20**

 **Luc-9**

 **Amycus Carrow is a Death Eater, a follower of Voldemort, who is a powerful dark wizard and blood purist, and does his bidding. He has been searching for Harry Potter to get revenge for his master's defeat. He wishes to kill Harry, and hates muggles with all his passion.**

'There are a lot of words in there that I don't know the meaning of,' Harry thought to himself. But a few of the words he did understand quite clearly.

This invisible man, whoever it was, wanted to kill Harry for some sort of revenge.

The other thing he knew the meaning of was the incredibly high stats and level that he had. With the rate at which he had been gaining skills lately, it would probably be a safe bet that someone at a Level of 39 probably knew an incredible amount of magic and skills.

He also knew one last thing.

The best thing to do in a situation where he was so hopelessly outclassed and outmatched, was to get the ever-living fuck out of there.

And so he hightailed it out of Privet Drive and off to school, where he sat fidgeting in class, feeling a dose of fear every single time something seemed to move or seemed out of order. There was no catching an invisible man coming, so the best he could do was be prepared. He only felt himself ease a little bit once Ms. Roemmele's class rolled around. Curious about her, he used his new and improved Observe to take a look at her statistics.

 **Emmeline Vance, Order of the Phoenix**

 **Lv-20**

 **HP-1500/1500**

 **MP-2000/2000**

 **Race-Witch**

 **Str-15**

 **Vit-15**

 **Dex-10**

 **Int-20**

 **Wis-20**

 **Luc-10**

 **Emmeline Vance is a member of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and The Order of Phoenix. She along with Dedalus Diggle are assigned to protect Harry in case any dark wizards come after him. She is assigned to look after Harry by the Ministry and will do so until told otherwise. She is a master of stealth and dueling. She is single and likes to mingle.**

Harry blinked once, then twice. His teacher's sex life was more information than he asked for, but at least he'd made sure that she was strong enough to take that Invisible Man on in a fair fight.

In the language period though, his inner turmoil was helped by a fairly large number of English level ups, leaving him at,

 **Language: Modern English, Lv-14 (30%)**

 **You had poor English reading skills, you can talk it, but can't walk it. Your reading is now better, grade Level-High School**

 **You will understand exactly what you read.**

The level ups in this much-wanted skill helped calm him down, and by the final period, Gamer's Mind had taken hold of his panic, and he'd come to terms with what he would do when he inevitably returned back to Privet Drive.

Harry took to developing a plan to protect himself, one that didn't involve relying on other wizards to protect him. He wasn't quite sure if he was going to get out of this one alive, but one thing was for sure. He'd been given his abilities for a reason, and he finally had an opportunity to test them out against a real opponent.

Screwing up wasn't an option.

The idea was, at its simplest, to distract, Boost up, and beat the shit out of the guy. Easier said than done. He needed to find a way to get him out of his hiding first. Whatever Invisibility magic he was using, it made him practically invincible against Harry, even when he had higher stats due to his Wardstone Perk. And then he had to improvise his way through somehow getting close enough to him to disable him.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Get rid of Amycus Carrow.**

 **Rewards,**

 **1000 Exp**

 **1 stat point**

 **Stat Upgrades**

 **Skill Upgrades**

 **Failure,**

 **Possible death**

 **YES/NO?**

There was no question. He _had_ to do it, not just for the sake of his safety, but also for his own self-reassurance that he was going the right direction with his ability growth.

"Fun stuff," Harry muttered to himself sardonically as the end-of-the-day bell rang.

It felt like the end-of-his-life bell to him.

On the way back home, Harry kept changing his mind between heading forward and fighting, or just escaping into the city and let the insane lunatic murder the Dursleys. But even with as much hate as he had towards them, he didn't want to get taken away by the CPS to an orphanage or something.

And so on he went, slowly and unsurely towards Privet Drive.

The moment he entered the street, Harry knew that something was up. It was eerily similar to the way his school street had been the day he had found Ms. Roemmele and the other wizards standing over Gordon. Not one person was out of their houses, all the curtains were closed in all the houses, and not one sound echoed along the street. No birds in the trees. No cats on the walls. No sign of life anywhere.

Harry sighed. Apparently, he wasn't the only one who had a plan in motion. Carrow was making his move too.

Walking up to the middle of the street in front of his house, Harry paused, took a deep breath, and loudly said, "Whoever you are, I'm here. I know you're here. And I know why you're here. Do what you need to, but please, leave my family out of this."

With that, Harry crossed his fingers and waited for Carrow to take the bait. A couple of moments later, a chuckle came out of nowhere.

"A man who cares about his family. I can respect that," with that, the air a few feet in front of him rippled, and the man stepped out of nowhere.

Amycus Carrow was a frail, gaunt-looking man, hair trimmed down to near nothing. He was dressed in a tattered black gown looking thing, and -or so Harry thought- and in his right hand held a bone-white stick.

"Is that your magic stick?" Harry asked. The distraction phase of his plan had begun the instant Carrow had shown himself. He just needed enough time to gauge what unforeseen abilities Carrow had and then find ways to make sure he wouldn't be killed by them.

Carrow smiled amusedly, "It is. Well…not mine...had to go into a lot of trouble to find it, but I had to bring it along tonight. It's only poetic justice after all. And you…you seem to be more aware of who you are than I expected."

"I know a few things," Harry replied, marking the stick as something to seriously avoid.

"Good," the menacing grin widened, "That makes killing you better than just slaughtering some random clueless Muggle kid. So…what will it be? Cutting your head off or having all the blood dry in your veins?"

"Neither seems ideal really," Harry replied flatly.

Carrow shrugged, "I'd have offered the easy way out, but that didn't end up so well for my master."

"It won't end up well for you either Carrow," a familiar voice spoke from behind him before he could ask him what he was talking about.

Harry turned around, and in the middle of the road, dressed in a purple gown just like the one Carrow wore, stood Ms. Roemmele, her own magic stick in hand.

Harry almost cursed then and there. His plan didn't account for someone else being there. He couldn't go all out if there was someone else involved.

Catching his eye, she said, "Harry, go inside."

"But-"

" _Now!_ " she snapped and Harry gritted his teeth before heading into the house. Just as he had closed the door, he spun on his feet, and instantly apparated onto the roof of the house, landing softly behind the cover of the chimney's column. Peering out slightly from behind the chimney, he strained his ears to listen to what the two were talking about.

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up!**

 **Sneaking, Lv-3 (9%)**

 **Allows you to sneak up on someone.**

 **20% chance of not getting caught.**

 **20% chance of a critical strike.**

Harry dismissed it and focused on listening in on their conversation.

"You've been running for a while Amycus. Surely you've realized by now that this was the only way it was going to end. You can't keep fooling an Auror with badly made Polyjuice." Ms. Roemmele said, her voice a lot softer than Harry had expected.

"I didn't escape the Ministry jail and evaded you all for these weeks just by using Polyjuice. Even if you kill me or take me in tonight, the boy will die." Carrow growled.

Vance gave him a sad smile, "I can't let you do that. The boy you hurt with your enchantment a few days ago…he almost died. If it wouldn't have been me treating him, he would have. I cannot let you keep on hurting innocents. I've turned enough of a blind eye to that for a long time now. Not anymore."

"Innocent? Who? That boy?" Amycus Carrow spat out, "He destroyed the one chance the wizarding world had to escape from muggle oppression. He killed my master and doomed us all Em!"

'What in the world?' Harry wondered, 'Has he lost it? I didn't kill anybody!'

"The boy has done no such thing!" Ms. Roemmele echoed his thoughts, "You are delusional and full of baseless hatred! Come back Amycus. You only have a few years left in your sentence, and if I vouch for you, they won't add any jail time. But if you harm a hair on Harry Potter or anyone here, I can't do anything!"

Amycus Carrow laughed, "You think I haven't made peace with that? I'm a Death Eater luv. I made my peace the moment the Dark Lord burned his mark onto me. Besides, I've set up explosive enchantments throughout this street by the dozens. Touch me, and everyone here dies."

Suddenly a huge wave of killing intent spread out and hit Harry like a ton of bricks.

Ping! Ping! Ping!

 **Skill leveled up! By detecting bloodlust, bloodlust leveled up!**

 **Detect bloodlust, Lv-4 (90%)**

 **This skill will detect any bloodlust directed at the user. It is an instinctive skill.**

 **Will detect within 30 feet and will tell origin.**

Harry looked at the fuming Ms. Roemmele, impressed. She sure did know how to make a point.

But contrary to being afraid, Carrow simply laughed. "Now there's my fiery Em. Don't worry. I promise I'll make it quick for the kid. I'm not heartless."

And with that, quick as a viper, his hand shot out and a red flash of light lit up the street, making Harry avert his eyes. When he looked back, Ms. Roemmele was sprawled unconscious on the street.

Carrow walked over to her and knelt down, gently caressing her face.

"I promise I'll one day make it up to you…we have a lifetime to spend together," he said, "But now it's time to settle an old score."

With that, Carrow turned around, and Harry knew that if he didn't want his relatives to die a swift and painful death, now would be the time to interfere.

It was time to put his plan in motion.

And so, with Gamer's Mind firing on all cylinders, Harry turned on the spot and silently apparated to a spot just a couple of feet behind the Death Eater. In one swift and planned movement, Harry used Accidental magic to light his hands ablaze with the hottest fire he could conjure up, activated the Wardstone Perk, and grabbed Carrow's right hand before using his boosted strength to bend and crush it with all his might.

Carrow near-instantly jumped away, but Harry had felt the flesh sizzling and the bones cracking under his palms, and he knew the deed was done when he saw the bone-white stick clatter onto the floor and a primal scream of pain ring in his ears.

The Death Eater was completely thrown off balance, his weapon lost and his mind struggling to comprehend how the events had turned against him so swiftly, but Harry was on the top of his game. Taking advantage of the opening, he swiftly set his fists ablaze again and using his superior Dex, weaved in between his opponent's guard and drove them into his knees. Carrow crumpled to the ground.

His plan had worked after all. Being underestimated was the best weapon out there.

Being faced by someone as helpless without magic as Carrow, Harry was in his element. He had fought playground fights his entire life. This time, he just had a bigger target to hit. Punch. Punch. Punch. Dodge the swinging arm. Punch to the spine. Punch to the groin. Punch to the back of the neck. There was no trick too dirty with his life at stake, and Harry wasn't holding back. His eyes were wide and he was shivering with adrenaline. This was the first time he had ever truly dominated someone in a fistfight, and it felt _incredible_. He had to force himself to stop when he did...

By the time he was done, Carrow was a motionless, smoking heap lying on the Dursley's curb.

Bloodlust, Harry realized. He'd just felt bloodlust for the first time.

A loud ping broke him out of his reverie.

Ping!

 **Due to your survival of a vicious attack you Physical Endurance has leveled up by 2!**

 **Physical Endurance, Lv-3 (80%)**

 **Your Body's durability increased and you take less damage.**

 **9% less damage from physical attacks.**

Ping!

 **New skill created!**

 **Critical strike! Lv-1 (60%)**

 **A precise strike that can cause 300% damage to the target.**

 **Chance of success- Luc+Dex**

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Get rid of Amycus Carrow.**

 **Rewards,**

 **1000 Exp**

 **1 stat point**

 **Stat Upgrades**

 **Skill Upgrades**

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up!**

 **Sneaking, Lv-4 (1%)**

 **Allows you to sneak up on someone.**

 **25% chance of not getting caught.**

 **25% chance of a critical strike.**

Harry waved those away, thankful that he had managed to pull off the surprise attack. He quickly checked his stats. He'd felt his Boosts fall away from exhaustion a few moments ago, so he wasn't surprised by the numbers.

 **HP-170/200**

 **MP- 2/100**

Glad that he'd checked his mana before trying to apparate or something, Harry quickly took out the hotcakes from breakfast that he had stored away and ate them up. A couple of hotcakes later, Harry's MP was full and much to his pleasant surprise, the cuts and scrapes he received from the scuffle were fully healed.

Not even a scar remained.

Harry sighed with relief, but he didn't dare rest. He had to clean up this mess before anyone else, especially the Dursleys noticed it.

Dragging the steaming hot Carrow over to where the unconscious Ms. Roemmele lay, Harry placed a hand on both their bodies and with a prayer to the heavens that his Apparition ability could carry more than one person, he visualized the only teacher's office he knew well enough to have memorized and twisted on the spot.

It was just as much, if not more painful than the first time he'd apparated, to carry two extra people, but he did do it, and a brief moment later, the three of them appeared in the dimly lit office of Ms. Roemmele at Harry's school.

"I did it!" Harry said joyously before he turned to look at his passengers and his jaw dropped. As it turned out, that it wasn't the case.

Ms. Roemmele's entire head of hair was missing.

Harry paused for a moment to stare at the sight of his most frightening teacher, knocked out and bald, before bursting out into hysteric laughter. Perhaps it was the adrenaline in his veins or just the sheer absurdity of his situation, but he just couldn't hold it in anymore.

The school grounds echoed with the wild laughter of a small boy that night, that eventually broke down into hiccups and sobs. If anyone heard it, they never spoke of it again.

* * *

He had been worried about leaving her with the Death Eater, but it was doubtful that the man was going to wake up anytime soon. When Harry had finally seen Miss Roemmele moving about, clearly close to waking up, he had apparated back to the Dursley house, where he had been repeatedly questioned by the adult Dursleys about why he had been late and had then been promptly locked in his cupboard for the night.

Still, he'd managed to get a Lying level out of it.

 **Lying, Lv-3 (40%)**

 **This is your ability to lie to people, the higher the level the better the lie and less chance of discovery!**

 **15% chance of success, less based on how extreme the lie is.**

Besides, getting grounded was perfectly fine with him, since he had to look over his spoils of war from his fight with Carrow to look over.

The first, and probably the most interesting, was the magic stick that he had dropped when Harry had first burned him. He'd found it lying on the ground in front of the house. When Harry had reached out to touch it, he'd gasped with shock when his hand had touched an invisible hard surface that seemed to cover the wand spherically.

It didn't allow him to touch it, so Harry just used a shovel, which it seemed perfectly fine with, to scoop it and put it into his school bag and carry it into his cupboard, where he was now trying every way he could think of to get through the barrier.

Finally, after an hour of experimentation, he impatiently threw half his MP towards the surface and winced when with a spike of pain, his HP dropped by 50 and a new window popped up.

 **New skill created!**

 **Runic Burnout Lv-1 (60%)**

 **A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. A common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.**

Harry nodded to himself as he read over the skill, noting that he'd have to careful with the next wards he encountered. They seemed to have a knack for knocking him out. Besides, this skill was by and in itself dangerous, even without any MP cost.

Putting all of that out of his mind, he used Observe on the wand.

 **The Riddler's Wand**

 **This wand is made out of yew and has a phoenix feather core, a rare and powerful combination yew retains a particularly dark and fearsome reputation in the spheres of dueling and all curses. However, it is untrue to say that those who use yew wands are more likely to be attracted to the Dark Arts than another. The witch or wizard best suited to a yew wand might equally prove a fierce protector of other. This wand that is very effective when used for curses and jinxes. It owes its loyalty to both Harry and its former master. It has been used by one Tom Riddle.**

 **50% attack when used against wizards.**

 **100% when used by an owner it is loyal to.**

He picked up the wand. Its hilt was bone and it seemed to glow when in contact with his hand. Harry held it tight as he got a good grip on the handle, before giving it a swish.

Nothing happened, so he ended up putting it back into his inventory and once again looking at his statistics.

Eyeing his STR, he frowned. It was far too little for the kind of threats that Carrow had presented. And if this fight was any indication, strength could be a weakness of wizards that Harry could exploit. So Harry opened his status and put in an extra four points raising it to 6. His use of magic in battle had also boosted his INT by 3, which he hadn't noticed earlier.

He then finally turned to his last reward from fighting Amycus, a trinket he had found in the Death eater's pockets…a small rock with some strange symbols engraved on it. The Observe on it had been interesting, so he had decided to hold onto it.

 **The Astral Network Portkey**

 **The Astral Network is a collection of a number of magical creature preserves around the world that have been hidden by their innate obfuscation magic. They can only be accessed via certain portkeys that are invisible to most wizards due to a variety of mind-bending magic that their creators used to protect the creatures inside. Through the years, many have been run down by invading dark magical creations like Inferi and monsters.**

 **Do you wish to Enter?**

 **YES/NO**

Harry pressed no. Carrow must have been using the forests to hide from the magic police. He was definitely interested in such a place if it could somewhere he could train against powerful foes and grow his skills faster, but he needed to be prepared for it.

Quickly, he put on whatever he could find that would make for the most protection, even going as far as wearing five of his baggy t-shirts. Once the Dursleys were asleep, he snuck out of the cupboard and stocked up on water, before he finally called up the window again, this time to press yes. As soon as he did that, suddenly the runes started glowing. Harry placed his hand on it, and in an instant, a whirling rainbow of light enveloped him and was whisked away from Privet Drive.

An awful ride on the Portkey later, Harry struggled to his feet, grumbling with pain, and looked around at the dark forest around him. One of the first things he noticed was the giant gaping hole in the ground a few feet away from him.

Curious, he went over to it. Looking in, he saw a set of stairs that lead deep into the Earth. Harry sighed before he started walked down into the dark dungeon.

"Did all this weird stuff happen all the time and I just didn't even notice?" Harry muttered to himself tiredly. Well, at least he hadn't gotten a headache today.

Almost as if it was reminded of its joke by Harry himself, the Universe decided to shake a small stone loose from the cave ceiling. A second later, it slammed into Harry's head, leaving him with a blinding headache.

* * *

 **Lots of changes this chapter. As usual, if you notice any errors, let me know where and I'll go back and fix them. As I said last chapter, I try, but I'm stll just one guy. Also, don't forget to let me know what you think of the story so far.**

 **I'll be putting up the old version of the story as a stacked up complete fic soon so that you all can compare the chapters and see what all I've changed up. I _will_ take it down after the rewrite is complete though. Check my profile for that one.**

 **REVIEW!**


	5. Book-I:Ode To The Moon

Chapter 4:

After the ringing in his ears had faded, Harry decided to avoid jinxing himself anymore and headed further into the tunnel that seemed to go on endlessly. Starting to get a bit bored by the monotony of it all, Harry decided to check his statistics to see where he was after the whole Carrow ordeal.

"Status," Harry called out and his status page opened up,

 **Harry Potter**

 **Health-200/200**

 **Mana-100/100**

 **The Gamer**

 **Title-The Boy who Lived**

 **(+20 Str,+20 Vit, +20 Dex, while in Home Turf)**

 **Level-4 Exp-1050/1200**

 **Race-wizard**

 **STR-8**

 **VIT-1(+2)=3**

 **DEX-3(+2)=5**

 **INT-9**

 **WIS-5**

 **LUC-3**

 **POINTS-7**

 **MONEY- 50£/10G0S0K**

 **Harry Potter is a wizard, the son of Lily Potter and James Potter. He has bad eyesight making it difficult for him to do well in class. His magic has gotten him trouble over the years in various schools. Strange things seem to happen around him. Harry is unaware of who he is, and wishes to find meaning in his life. Harry loves his mother and hates the Dursleys.**

 **Status- wizard, giving Harry - +2 VIT, +3 DEX and the ability to control magic, talk to snakes, control his appearance, and look cool.**

With some apprehension, Harry noted that his base Vitality and Dexterity were both very low, and so was his Luck. Seeing the rest of his stats grow while those three remained low irked Harry. He knew that he would fall into the method of simply focusing on a few particular stats like Gordon had mentioned, which would probably turn him into some 'class' of a wizard, but he wanted to keep his options open this early in the game.

Besides, his speed, stamina, and luck had more than saved his butt during his tussle with the full-grown wizard killer he'd encountered, so he wasn't ever going to underestimate those particular aspects of himself again. He knew he should be saving up points, but right now, his style of fighting depended heavily on physical attacks. Until the time he learned more ranged magic attacks, he would need as many points in Physical stats as he had.

So, without thinking about it much more, Harry used his remaining points and improved his Vit, Dex, and Luck, making his strengths a lot more balanced. His new stats were,

 **STR-8**

 **VIT-4(+2)=6**

 **DEX-4(+2)=6**

 **INT-9**

 **WIS-5**

 **LUC-6**

 **Points-0**

Despite his sure decision to use up his points, Harry hoped he would get a level up soon. The lack of stat points left him a bit leery. But with this and his perks, he could just have a chance of managing to make it out of this high-stakes grinding session alive.

He kept walking and after some time the stairs stopped descending. It was there that Harry found himself at the beginning of a long narrow tunnel that led off into darkness.

"It had to lead into ominous darkness" Harry muttered as he ducked under a bunch of low hanging stalactites and started off into the tunnel, "Why couldn't it lead to a cozy little room with TV and cola? Why the darkness?"

With a small hiss, his hand lit up with a small amount of fire as the moonlight that fell into the cave faded away, plunging the tunnel into pitch black.

After what seemed like an hour of walking, jogging, and a piss poor attempt at sprinting through the low, Harry walked out of the tunnel into a circular domed hall. Its smooth floor and high rising domed roof had strange markings etched on them that looked like they were put there by sharp claws, faintly giving off the impression of being a replication of the night sky. Harry could just about connect some of the symbols and see Orion's belt and the little dipper, as well as the rough, jagged-edged crescent shape that seemed to be depicting the moon.

It all screamed age and primitivism to Harry, and he couldn't help but wonder what kind of man…or perhaps something else…had done this.

Taking a few steps forward, Harry looked up to admire the roof.

Of course, letting himself go in a clearly dangerous place like that wasn't really a smart thing to do. He nearly jumped a meter into the air when he heard a strange groaning sound a few feet behind him. Just as Harry jumped around to look at what it was, a large chunk of the wall to his right collapsed and out of the hole came a _zombie_ of all things.

It was grey, moldy-looking, and had a chunk of its shoulder missing. Its eye sockets were filled with maggots and its skeletal body had skin that was grey and almost transparent in color. It slowly ambled towards him, the lack of any clothing left its half rotten privates dangling rather unpleasantly in front of Harry's eyes.

Almost vomiting right then and there, Harry averted his gaze from the undead pendulum and fixed his gaze on the zombie's head.

"Observe."

 **Inferius Lv-7**

 **HP: 500 MP:75**

 **A nigh-invulnerable undead that had been revived from the dead by the power of the Necromantic arts. It's only weaknesses are fire and cranial injuries. It uses the tools it used in its life but is now far more deadly as it has nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Hates being called a zombie.**

 **Kill to gain-25 Exp**

"Okay," Harry muttered, "So…not a zombie."

The thing looked like something out of a B-Grade horror movie, riding so deep into the Uncanny Valley that it was practically giving Harry shivers. There were scars over its body, meaning that it had probably faced a lot of fights and lived, or rather unlived, to tell the tale, something that didn't bode well for Harry.

"Peachy. Just peachy," Harry said to himself as he prepared to roast the thing where it stood when suddenly, fate turned on its head and he suddenly heard a ping.

Ping!

 **Shield of Lily Perk activated!**

 **Grants +20 to all stats against all magicals with ill intent. Will nullify completely when Harry reaches 17. Represents the pure unconditional protective nature of a mother's love. Such is the power of Lily's sacrifice of her life for Harry.**

A grin spread across Harry's face. It felt incredible to see how his mother was protecting him even after being gone, even if it was slightly unnecessary in this case.

Knowing that he was way too overpowered for the undead husk in front him, Harry decided to try something he hadn't done yet. Ranged attacks.

Concentrating a large amount of his mana into a singular focal point in his hand, Harry ignited it with a thought. The slowly pulsating orb of light burst into flames in an instant, swirling around on Harry's hand while still keeping its shape intact. With a grin, Harry tossed the fireball right at the Inferius's face, causing it to start burning like it was doused in gasoline. Within seconds all that was left of it was ashes.

Slightly unsettled by how easy it felt, Harry looked at the spot where the Inferius had been burnt to a crisp and suddenly noticed that there was something left behind.

"Is that…..did I just get some loot from that?" Harry said out loud, gingerly walking over to the ashes and picking up the 1£ coin and a rather rusty looking knife, which he put in his inventory. He then paused to inspect fiver. It certainly looked real, but why in the world would a zombie drop money?

Shrugging to himself, Harry the coin into his inventory and much to his pleasant surprise, his amount of money increased to 51£.

A glint of greed appeared in Harry's wide eyes as he turned to look at the hole in the wall where the first Inferius had come from. A horde-full of grey-skinned husks just like the one he'd slain earlier were pooling in through the gap.

He should've been afraid, but instead, the only thought in his head was how much money he could pull together if he managed to defeat this many Inferi.

He was standing in a money-printing machine, and all he needed to do to get rich was flame up and burn the horde down.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Survive the horde of Inferi! And then defeat the boss!**

 **Rewards,**

 **+3 stat points**

 **?**

 **Failure,**

 **Death**

 **YES/NO?**

Confident in his abilities, Harry pressed yes.

As soon as the window in front of him disappeared, he grinned, and his hands burst into flames. Gamer's Mind activated and so did Shield of Lily, honing Harry's powers and mind down to razor sharp focus.

Digging his heel in, Harry jumped forwards, dashing between the ranks of the incoming horde and setting fire to as many Inferi as he could as fast as he could. He didn't have to do more than punch or push once to set them on fire since the dead, dried skin and muscles of the undead walkers were more than incredibly flammable. Emboldened by his success, he started playing around with his enemies, grabbing some of them from behind and knocking them off-balance or just pushing them into each other to create spectacular Domino chains of fire.

With his superior speed and fire, Harry managed to run through little more than a dozen Inferi in no time at all. However, things were about to get a whole lot difficult for him.

Finishing off his 14th kill of the battle, Harry paused to strain his ears. He'd been hearing a strange scuttling sound for a while now and had dismissed it for Inferi noises, but it was growing louder and louder by the second.

BOOM!

The wall on the other side of the cavern blasted outwards revealing, much to Harry's terror, a humongous swarm of giant 3 foot tall spiders.

Harry froze.

Up and until that point, Gamer's Mind had kept him in a state of perfect calm, but something about the spiders…Harry's vision blurred for a moment. The ground seemed to slip underneath him…the light in his vision started fading…his steps faltered.

'Not now!' Harry thought through his mental mess in a fleeting moment of clarity, and the clouds cleared a little. Instinctively, he let loose a blast of fire in-front of him. A shrill screech filled the cavern. When Harry's eyes refocused, one of the spiders lay a couple of feet in front of him, three of its legs burnt off into stubs, and the rest had stopped a safe distance away from him, clearly scared by the effectiveness of their target's attacks.

Harry was just as scared.

He didn't know what had caused him to falter like that. He'd never been scared of spiders as far as he remembered, but something had just made him break down in the middle of a life and death situation. Feeling a bit shaken, Harry tried using Gamer's Mind. A hazy sense of calm fell over him, but the effect was not as powerful as he would have hoped for.

Still, it was enough. The beginnings of a plan formed in his head.

Harry spun on his heels and dashed towards the entrance of the tunnel that he had entered from.

Behind him, he heard the scuttling start up again. Seeing their prey run had apparently restored the spiders' confidence, and the rest of the murderous abominations weren't far behind. Harry ran as far into the tunnel as he could, trying to make sure that all of the Inferi and spiders were in the tunnel.

As soon as he felt confident enough with his position, he turned around, putting his hand together and pooling in as much mana as he could to the point where he could feel his lungs struggling in his chest. With a single thought, he ignited it and tossed it into the swarm of creepy-crawlies scuttling towards him.

It was less like the flamethrower Harry had hoped for and more like a controlled bomb, but it did a trick. Harry's magic sang as an immense shockwave and a wall of fire overtook the entire tunnel in front of Harry, incinerating anything in its path.

When the light faded from Harry's eyes, all that remained of his army of enemies were a couple of stragglers with burnt legs near the back, ashes, and a large number of coins and bills that looked like they'd total up to a fair amount of moolah.

Harry collapsed to his knees panting from exhaustion.

After a moment to catch his breath, Harry noticed a box in front of him as the Shield of Lily faded.

 **You have leveled up!**

 **+5 stat points!**

 **+50HP**

 **+25MP**

The exp he had gotten from slaughtering the zombies and spiders must've pushed him over. Harry then quickly pulled up all his stats,

 **Harry Potter**

 **Health-250/250**

 **Mana-125/125**

 **The Gamer**

 **Title-The Boy who Lived**

 **(+20 Str,+20 Vit, +20 Dex, while in Home Turf)**

 **Level-5 Exp-460/2400**

 **Race-wizard**

 **STR-8**

 **VIT-4(+3)=7**

 **DEX-4(+3)=7**

 **INT-9**

 **WIS-5**

 **LUC-6**

 **POINTS-5**

 **MONEY- 75£/11G0S0K**

 **Harry Potter is a wizard, the son of Lily Potter and James Potter. He has bad eyesight making it difficult for him to do well in class. His magic has gotten him trouble over the years in various schools. Strange things seem to happen around him. Harry is unaware of who he is, and wishes to find meaning in his life. Harry loves his mother, and hates the Dursleys.**

 **Status- wizard, giving Harry - +3 VIT, +3 DEX and the ability to control magic, talk to snakes, control his appearance and look cool.**

An important thing that Harry noticed was that his wizard status boost had also gone up, which must have had something to do with him leveling up. It hadn't done that when he had evolved from Lv-2 to Lv-4, which meant that it must've been only once per every 5 levels.

Ping!

 **For your logical thinking, you have gained +1 Wis!**

'That's convenient,' Harry thought as he closed the open boxes and quickly gathered up all of his loot, which all totaled up to a fantastic amount.

 **100£ and 12 G**

It was amazing! If things kept progressing at this speed, Harry would have enough money to pay for his own school fees and finally rid himself from his dependency on the Dursleys without just turning into a street side beggar.

While walking back towards the domed hall, Harry couldn't help but wonder what was it that determined the amount of loot he got from his kills. He didn't know for sure, but he had a feeling about what he was.

With a thought, Harry brought up his stats and pressed on Luc.

 **Luc-6**

 **Luck determines your luckiness. This is useful in certain skills and also determines what you get as loot. The higher your luck the more chance you get of obtaining higher loot**

Harry's eyes widened at this. This…this was what he needed. He then quickly put all his stat points in Luc.

 **STR-8**

 **VIT-4(+2)=6**

 **DEX-4(+2)=6**

 **INT-9**

 **WIS-5**

 **LUC-11**

 **POINTS-0**

Satisfied with that, he moved onwards towards the end of the tunnel, where he found the few Inferi who had managed to survive the flame blast. Too wary to use up what was left of his mana, Harry decided to use something different. Pulling out his old kitchen-knife that he'd stolen from the Dursleys, Harry used his other hand to pool some mana onto the blade and set it on fire, after which he stabbed them each in the head. One by one, they all dissolved into dust.

Ping!

 **A new skill has been made due to constant use!**

 **Blade Mastery, Lv-1 (80%)**

 **Allows the user to freely handle swords and knives.**

 **5% more damage when using blades.**

After everything was cleared up, Harry walked around the chamber, gently brushing his fingers over the curious little symbols that adorned the wall all around him.

Wondering if they had any magical properties to them, Harry gently pushed some mana into one of the symbols. Immediately, it started glowing. Then the ones beside it…then the next…then next.

Slowly but surely, every single one of the symbols in the cavern lit up with a gentle silver light.

Caught off guard, Harry could barely manage to stay on his feet when the whole cavern he was stood in groaned and started quaking. Loose rocks and dust fell from the ceiling and a group of bats, shaken free of their perches, flew around the cavern forcing Harry to duck as the ceiling above him groaned and parted, opening up to the lush forest above.

The moonlight flooded the cavern, and as soon as it touched him, the floor he stood on started rising as well, lifting Harry along with it slowly up to the ground level.

Harry looked around with panic, desperately trying to figure out what was going on, when suddenly an extremely loud howl ripped through the air.

"Wait a minute," Harry muttered as he realized what was going on. The boss that the quest mentioned…could it be what he was thinking? Harry's eyes flitted to the sky, and immediately his suspicions were confirmed. The full moon that shone on him so brightly was much more foreboding than it had been before.

Every muscle in his body tensed, and Harry was suddenly on guard. If what he thought was actually true and there really was a _werewolf_ that he had to fight, he didn't want to use fire and draw attention to himself.

He'd read the stories. He knew how strong werewolves were known to be, and if even half the rumors were true, he didn't want anything to do with this one.

Cautiously, he activated the wardstone perk.

 **Wardstone perk activated!**

 **Grants +1000 HP and +1000 MP when activated it at the cost of -25 MP per minute. All wounds are healed. All ailments cured. +20 Str,+20 Vit, +20 Dex.**

'I'm going to have to watch how I use this,' Harry realized as he reread the cost, "I can barely use the perk for an hour with my current MP.' Harry thought to himself.

1125 MP divided by 25 to be exact. 45 minutes. That was his limit if he used _no_ magic at all when he was boosted, which was unrealistic. Knowing that his flamboyant use of fire magic burned through his mana fairly, fast, he estimated that he'd have 15 to 20 minutes at max depending on how much magic he used.

Gamer's Mind, being back at full strength, helped Harry come up with a plan.

At its simplest, it was quite similar to what he had done with Carrow. Buy enough time to figure out its weaknesses, then find an opportune moment to strike at those weaknesses.

Getting the idea to hide, he quickly ran towards a nearby tree full speed, using his boosted Dex to run a couple of steps up its side before jumping and grabbing onto a low hanging branch. With a grunt, he pulled himself up onto it and started climbing the branches up into the more leaf-covered area that'd hide him better.

He'd just found a place to perch and hide in between the leaves and branches when something burst through the foliage and onto the clearing he was just in.

Harry stilled.

It was a grotesque looking creature. It looked like a wolf, but not so at the same time. Its front legs a little too long, its snout a little too short, its eyes a little too human. And its entire body was riddled with scars.

Its eyes swept the clearing, presumably looking for the source of all the ruckus that had been caused when the platform had raised into the ground. Harry watched with bated breath as the glowing amber orbs looked across the clearing. Hoping to get some information to help him escape, Harry mouthed the command, 'Observe.'

A window popped up.

 **Beta wolf Lv-27**

 **HP: 2700/3000**

 **MP:500/600**

 **Race-Werewolf**

 **Str-35**

 **Vit-15**

 **Dex-35**

 **Int-4**

 **Wis-2**

 **Luc-2**

 **A human that upon the complete rising of the full moon, becomes a fearsome and deadly near-wolf. This condition is caused by infection with lycanthropy, also known as werewolfry. Appears in the form of a wolf but there are distinctions between them and regular wolves. They are bloodthirsty, strong and will hunt any human they sense.**

 **Kill to gain- 1000 Exp.**

While it was incredibly tempting to fight the werewolf and gain a level, Harry wasn't sure he was ready for this, and fighting someone with strength stats higher than even his boosted ones wasn't a risk he wanted to take.

With a stab of panic, he realized that he had forgotten to pick the portkey up once he had arrived.

Immediately deciding on his next move, he swiftly turned, found a branch from a nearby tree that was close enough to jump to, and leaped across, managing to land with relative ease. Quickly finding another branch, jumped, and started to leap and swing through the trees away from that godforsaken clearing, in search of a place where he could get on solid ground long enough to focus and apparate the long distance back home.

He was quiet, but not quite enough.

 **Bloodlust detected!**

 **Origin of BL- Beta wolf wants to kill you.**

'Bugger!' Harry thought as he glanced back at the forest thicket under his feet and saw the wolf running at breakneck speeds following him on the ground, easily keeping up with his treetop parkouring. Harry, knowing the wolf's stats and knowing his own, knew that running was futile.

Furthermore, his wardstone perk was slowly running out of time. If he had to fight this creature, he decided that he'd rather do it with the perk rather than without.

With that in mind, Harry jumped off the next branch he found footing on, twisted around mid-air and let himself plummet towards the ground, aiming for the werewolf. He started counting down the 60-foot long fall downwards as he sped up.

If he wanted to get a jump on it, he'd have to time this just right.

50 feet…40 feet...

The werewolf had reached the spot of ground where Harry would land and was on two feet, snapping and snarling at its falling prey.

30 feet…

The snarls were growing louder by the second as Harry pooled almost a thousand points worth of mana into his hands.

20 feet…

He could almost feel the jaws ready to bite him to shreds.

10 feet…9…8…7…

NOW!

"Bad doggy!" Harry snarled, as he let loose a torrential stream of fire from both his hands downwards, right into the werewolf's face, repeating his attack inside the tunnel once again. The blast was so strong that it pushed Harry back into the air, tossing him back up and towards the left, where he landed with a painful thump on his back.

Sure that he must have done at least some damage, Harry quickly got to his feet and turned towards the werewolf. It was lying on the ground, with its facial bones visible. Harry had burned its snout off and the remaining flesh on its face was charred and bloody.

Harry froze.

But it wasn't the grotesque and horrifying scene struck terror into Harry's heart. It was how that very bloody snout and exposed muscles were bubbling and writhing on the werewolf's exposed bones. Harry watched with shock as the bones whitened, the muscles and sinew reknit itself around it, and the skin grew back over it.

"Observe," he said, his voice shaking, and the result shook him even more.

 **Beta wolf Lv-17**

 **HP-2000…2050...2100...2150...2200/3000**

 **MP-500...450…400…350…300/600**

 **Race-Werewolf**

 **Str-35**

 **Vit-15**

 **Dex-25**

 **Int-4**

 **Wis-2**

 **Luc-2**

 **A human that upon the complete rising of the full moon, becomes a fearsome and deadly near-wolf. This condition is caused by infection with lycanthropy, also known as werewolfry. Appears in the form of a wolf but, there are distinctions between them and regular wolves. They are bloodthirsty, strong and will hunt any human it senses.**

 **Kill to gain- 1000 Exp.**

The beast's HP was going back up at the cost of its MP. Soon enough, the only physical evidence that remained of Harry's attack was the light scar on the skin that covered the wolf's snout.

Steeling himself after that revelation, Harry lit up his fists on fire and ran closer towards the wolf while it struggled to its feet. The only way he could see winning this fight was if could bring down the werewolf's mana to 0 so it couldn't regenerate, and he would need at least two more fire blasts to take the beast down for good. What Harry needed to do was regenerate his mana, and until then, the only choice he had left was low-mana-using physical combat.

Harry knew of the legends and stories that spoke of werewolves having venom in their teeth and claws. He would have to avoid getting struck by those.

Luckily for him, as smart and strong as the werewolf was, it was still a beast above all. With Gamer's Mind, it was easy enough to read its movements and dodge its first few angry swipes and snaps of his jaw. It helped him focus and profile the patterns and style of the wolf's movements. There was no restraint there. There was no defense. This animal was at the top of the food chain, the strongest and deadliest in its kingdom. It went in one direction, always forward, toward the prey. All offense. No holding back.

Thus, during the first few punches he landed, Harry focused heavily on his defense and let his muscles settle into the rhythm of the ducking, dodging and then punching. Slipping under its lanky arms, Harry put his weight behind his fiery fist and drove it full force into the wolf's flank. He then ducked under the next swing and snapped his head downwards, barely missing the biting jaws of the wolf. Tensing his muscles, he then launched a continuous barrage of strikes at the wolf's abdomen, before finally ducking back out, spinning around the wolf and driving one last punch into its spine.

The wolf howled in pain and swiped its front claws at Harry's left arm, only managing to tear away the cloth and scratch the skin on his bicep. But the scratch had enough of the venom in it to leave Harry's nerves burning with pain.

He wanted to stop. He _needed_ to stop. But he couldn't.

Pushing the pain to the back of his mind, Harry pushed a fair amount of mana into his hand, turning the blazing fire blue with heat. Simultaneously, he struck out with his other forearm at the wolf's face to distract it and plunged his fiery hand straight in with the heel of his palm, pushing with all his strength.

The wolf fell to the ground with the force behind the flaming shot. Pressing the advantage decisively, Harry struck its neck and dug his fingers in, grabbing at its windpipe and pulling in one powerful move, lacerating its throat and leaving its jaw hanging free.

The attack would have killed a human. But this wasn't human. Empowered by the power of the moon, the wolf's neck healed, but in the process, it ended up draining up the last of its mana, rendering it killable.

Harry relaxed a bit, sighing as he watched the mana drop to zero on the Observe screen and that little moment was all the werewolf needed. A normal wolf wouldn't have had the joints in its front legs to allow it to use them as its hands. This wasn't a normal wolf. Out of nowhere, a double blow hit Harry on both sides of his head, jarring him completely. Harry stumbled back and fell down to the ground, giving the wolf a chance to get up.

Looking at the incoming beast, Harry knew that he wouldn't be getting out of this one alive. His mana wasn't fully recharged. His stamina was waning. There wasn't much left in him. Covering his eyes with a hand, he tensed, anticipating the pain.

It never came.

It was a moment before Harry looked up to see what had happened, and when he did, his mouth fell open in wonderment at what he saw.

The werewolf was trapped, howling and snarling in a tornado of swirling wind that was carrying it further and further from Harry before slamming it down onto the floor a good dozen meters away from him.

Ping!

 **Accidental Magic Skill has been evolved due to extreme use!**

 **Wandless Magic Lv- 7 (1%)**

 **Allows you to control your magic in short sporadic bursts. You can try to use it in anyway you wish and it will obey your every command. Has various discoverable branches.**

 **Cost-30 MP per minute**

 **Branch A -Remomancy-Allows you to control any form of elements. You can reconstruct it in any way you wish and it will obey your every command.**

 **Cost-100 MP per minute**

"Oh heck yeah" Harry muttered as he waved the screen away and stared the rapidly approaching wolf that was now free of the winds it was trapped in. He readied himself.

"I'm not going to die," he said out loud with determination, "Not today."

Swiftly, Harry twisted out of the way of the rampaging wolf and as its inertia carried it forward, he turned and unleashed a concentrated jet stream of red red-hot at the wolf's exposed back. Howling with pain, the wolf turned faster than a creature its size should have and tried to swipe him with its claws. Testing out his new powers, Harry let his mana seep into the air around him, sending a blast of wind to deflect the incoming limb. He then dropped to his knees and slammed his fists into the ground, pushing his mana into the earth and commanding it to rise up in a spike. It obeyed, piercing the wolf right through the stomach before melting back into the ground.

Despite all of that, it barely stumbled. The rage that clouded its mind stopped it from feeling the pain, but Harry took one look at the wolf's stats and knew he was doing damage.

He fell back onto his favourite element, letting loose a fiery clawed hand that ripped downwards along the creature's cheek as he simultaneously stepped under its flailing arms to shoot a wind-powered elbow upward into its abdomen, knocking it off balance, before rolling out of it's range and sending a final earth spike strike towards the spine. The spike pierced right through, and this time, under Harry's command, held its shape.

Harry saw no reason to stop there. He was now the predator and his predator was now the prey. His hand arced down into landing another palm heel onto the bridge of its nose, incapacitating its smelling capabilities. The spikes then melted away, and the wolf crumpled to the floor.

He then quickly backed off to a safer distance, planning to try out an idea he had just thought of. He let most of what was left of his mana out of his body and concentrated it all around the werewolf that was trying to get onto his feet. Then he pressed.

The werewolf stopped, unable to move as the very water in its blood froze.

Under Harry's next command, dozens of thin earthly needles erupted from the ground and punctured the werewolf's abdomen in every possible direction, almost killing him.

Almost.

Harry watched horrified through his observe window as the werewolf pulled free of its piercing bonds, healing slowly but surely, and start walking towards Harry. There was madness in its eyes.

Panic started to set into Harry. His own mana was too low to do any big attacks, and his injuries were starting to catch up with him, making him feel light headed.

 **HP-300/1200**

 **MP-45/1100**

'Well. Looks like this is it.' Harry thought, finally feeling the resignation seep in as he continued on his train of thought, 'At least I'll get to see mum and dad. Maybe they'll even teach me some-'

Harry's thoughts suddenly ground to a halt. Almost as if on its own, his mouth completed his thought.

"Wand magic." Harry whispered to himself, and hope arose again.

"Inventory," he said and pulled out the Riddler's wand, pointing it at the limping werewolf that was slowly gaining on him. With no idea what to say or do, Harry simply pushed his own mana into the wand and desperately hoped for something that would stop the wolf.

An almost invisible wave rippled through the air and struck the werewolf.

It was as if an invisible sword slashed into the flesh of the werewolf's chest, causing blood to spurt out like a fountain. It fell onto the floor, bleeding and defeated.

A hysterical laugh ripped through Harry's throat as he fell onto his knees.

Ping!

 **Due to your unique use of your skills you have gained +1 Wis!**

 **Due to your unique use of your skills you have gained +2Dex!**

Ping!

 **Due to the fact you survived nearly dying your Physical Endurance has leveled up thrice!**

 **Physical Endurance, Lv.6 (78%)**

 **Your Body's durability increased and you take less damage.**

 **18% less damage from physical attacks**

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up! By detecting blood lust, bloodlust leveled up!**

 **Detect bloodlust, Lv-5 (80%)**

 **This skill will detect any bloodlust directed at the user. It is an instinctive skill.**

 **Will detect within 40 feet and will tell origin.**

Ping!

 **Due to the fact you survived a werewolf attack you have gained to title: Wulfslayer**

 **Gives the user a boost of +40 in all stats if their HP is less than 5%.**

Ping!

 **Quest Completed!**

 **Survive the horde of inferi! And then defeat the boss!**

 **Rewards,**

 **+3 stat points**

 **A new title!**

 **Total Exp- 13,625 Exp**

 **Inferi- 145 x 25= 3625 Exp**

 **Beta wolf = 10,000 Exp**

Ping! Ping!

 **You have gained two levels!**

Harry suddenly felt himself surrounded by a veil of light and all his injuries and wounds disappeared. Feeling the breath settling back into his lungs, Harry marveled at the amount of stats he had now. His new title was pretty amazing too, but he hoped it wouldn't see much use.

One thing was for sure. He really needed to learn to be less reckless. This fight was to close for comfort.

Harry fell onto his back and lay there. From the horizon far hidden behind the trees, the first rays of sunlight filtered through and a ray of sunlight fell and shone across his face. He had been resting there for just a few seconds when his attention was drawn by a groan towards his left.

'Shouldn't it be dead by now?' Harry wondered as he got up to his feet and turned towards where the wolf lay, only to see the form of a man lying where it was. Wondering where he came from and where the wolf was, he looked around, until the fuzziness in his head cleared and he connected the dots.

The beast was a werewolf. The man _was_ the wolf.

The stories on whether the werewolves knew what they were doing during full moon varied, so Harry decided to give the man the benefit of the doubt. Cautiously, he walked closer towards the man.

The man groaned and turned. His side was still bleeding. Approaching him warily, Harry put a hand on the man's shoulder and shook him. The man's eyes fluttered open and as soon as he caught sight of Harry, he gasped.

"What are you doing here boy? How did-" he grimaced with pain before continuing, "How did you even get into this place?"

"My questions first. Why did you attack me last night?" Harry asked coldly.

"Attack you? But last night was . . . No!" he seemed struck as his face twisted with grief. With a tiny voice, he asked, "Did the wolf. . . Did the wolf attack you?"

Harry nodded. The man seemed devastated, which led Harry to believe that he didn't remember the last night, but he couldn't be sure.

"Check your arms and legs boy. See if you've been bitten." The man finally said after a moment's silence.

Harry looked a bit thrown by the comment, but he quickly checked his arms and legs, which seemed to satisfy the man. "A werewolf's bite can be dangerous. It usually ends up killing most and turning the rest. You're a lucky one." The man shifted around and propped himself up on a nearby rock with a hand on his side. "What happened anyway?"

"Don't you know? You attacked me after all."

"The transformation doesn't work that way. We wizards can't know or control anything. That's why my pack and I get together here for full moon. No humans come by this forest for some reason so we can move about without hurting anybody," the man's eyes dimmed as he looked at Harry apologetically, "So much for that."

"So the only reason you come here is to not hurt anybody," Harry felt something in his stomach coiling with guilt.

"Well, the company isn't too bad, and I certainly don't mind the scenery," The man said with a small smile.

"But I hurt were only trying to stop yourself from hurting someone and I-," Harry's voice hitched halfway through the sentence. The coil in his stomach was growing painful at the sight of the bleeding. He'd never quite felt this kind of guilt. It was painful. Swallowing, he continued, "I have to help you. Won't your friends come looking for you? Can't I fetch someone?"

"Afraid not lad. The nearest town his at least a few hundred kilometers away and my friends won't be looking for me. They all have their jobs that they can't take more than a day off of. We all head out from wherever we wake up after the night," he said as he looked at his bleeding side and grimaced.

"But you're bleeding out. I have to do something!"

"Nothing to do-what's your name son?"

"Harry?"

"Good name young man, that's a good name," he said with a smile, "There's nothing to do. We all die someday. Today is just my day. I'm just glad I didn't end up killing you or worse."

"There is always something you can do." said Harry, shaking his head, his voice determined. He prepared some mana and stepped around the man. Holding together the lips of the cut, he let loose a concentrated stream of fire barely a centimeter wide, using it to burn the flesh along the cut, cauterizing the wound as he tried his best to ignore the man's screams of pain.

"This should do it." Harry said, wiping away the blood on the wound with his sleeve.

"I'm afraid not young man, I've lost a lot of blood," the man said, his voice trembling with pain, "And I won't ask how you did that. I know it probably saved your life last night."

Harry quickly cast observe on the man, hoping for some information he could use to try and help him. Tears started building up in his eyes at what he read. The observation had changed from the wolf to the man.

 **Johnathon Wright Lv-27**

 **HP-70/1800(-1 per second due to Internal Bleeding status)**

 **MP-0/600**

 **Race-Werewolf**

 **Str-25**

 **Vit-12**

 **Dex-15**

 **Int-14**

 **Wis-32**

 **Luc-12**

 **A human that upon the complete rising of the full moon, becomes a werewolf. He was once a wizard who abandoned his family, in a courageous effort to protect them from the Death Eaters. He was soon after turned by the Death Eater werewolves as revenge for refusing to join their cause. He loveshis wife and has a son, who he wants to protect with all his heart.**

Aren't you a werewolf, can't you heal fast or something?" Harry asked desperately, opening his inventory and taking out some pancakes and water bottles to help him regen, making John drink and eat some of it and washing the cauterized wound with the leftover water.

John vomited the food right back out. His wound had hit is oesophagus, and he couldn't even properly swallow the food without coughing up blood.

"No magic left in me I'm afraid. And I daresay... As I said, there is not much left to do. It's my time."

"No. NO! I can't let you die. I'd have killed you! I can't!" Harry cried out in frustration as he read John's description again.

"Listen Harry! Listen. It's alright! It's alright," Johnathon said, his voice soothing despite the shaking, "I forgive you. You did what you did to save your own life. No one blames you for that, least of all me."

His eyes met Harry and true enough, there was no anger in them.

Harry finally gave up fumbling around looking for anything to help and sat down on the grass beside the man, sobs wracking through his tiny body.

"Harry. How old are you?"

"10. I'll be 11 next week."

"I have a son your age."

"Hmm?" Harry said. His tears still hadn't stopped.

"Do you know what Hogwarts is?"

Harry shook his head. He'd heard that word before from some of the patrons at Leaky Cauldron, but he didn't know more than that.

"No? You must be muggleborn then. Well, it's a school for magic. The best there is. Judging by what you did to fix my wound, you'll easily be able to get in. I want you to do something for me when you get there. There is a letter in my left pocket. Wrote it a while ago. Find my son, will you Harry? Get it to him." He paused to take another breath.

"And listen to me Harry. Don't beat yourself up about me alright? You always have the right to protect yourself. The worst thing you could do after today is to spend your life wallowing in guilt for doing just that. Promise me that you will live Harry and that you will live well."

"I promise," Harry said, and his voice didn't waver despite the sobs that were wrecking through his body.

They sat side by side for a while. There were no words that needed to be said.

"It's a beautiful morning." John finally said, lost in the tranquil peace of the moment.

"It is," Harry replied, and when he looked back at him, John's eyes were vacant. He had passed on.

And as Harry watched, his body slowly dissolved into a gentle golden mist that floated away on the summer morning breeze of the forest, leaving behind only a grey jacket the color of the beta wolf's skin and a letter wrapped in a yellowing envelope.

* * *

 **Made sure to highlight a few flaws of Harry in this chapter. Greed and Impatience. Both of those keep making him use up his stat points faster than he should. My old readers would know that the Game isn't exactly a benevolent thing in this story. Harry is in constant danger of getting corrupted by it, and the more flaws of his I showcase, the more you as a reader will see the significance of that Mystery-Man's words about addicting Harry to the power in the first chapter.**

 **Also, glad many of you liked the touch I added to Vance and Carrow's relationship last chapter. It's a setup for a plot thread I'll be continuing later in the story. As always, let me know what you thought.**

 **REVIEW!**


	6. Book-I:Diagonal Adventures

Chapter 5:

 _"In a small locked tower, never visited by any student at Hogwarts, sits an ancient book that has not been touched by human hands since the four founders placed it there on completion of the castle. Beside the book, which is bound in peeling black dragon-hide, stands a small silver inkpot and from this protrudes a long, faded quill. These are the Quill of Acceptance and the Book of Admittance and they constitute the only process by which students are selected for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry._

 _If anybody understands what powerful and long-lasting magic causes this book and quill to behave as they do, they have never confessed to it, doubtless because it saves the staff tedious explanations to parents who are furious that their children have not been selected for Hogwarts. The Book and Quill's decision is taken as final and no child has ever been admitted whose name has not first been inscribed on the book's yellowing pages._

 _At the precise moment that a child first exhibits signs of magic, the Quill, which is believed to have been taken from an Augurey, floats up out of its inkpot and attempts to inscribe the name of that child upon the pages of the Book. Augurey feathers are known to repel ink and the inkpot is empty; nobody has ever managed to analyze precisely what the silvery fluid flowing from the enchanted Quill is._

 _Those few who have observed the process agree that the Quill might be judged more lenient than the Book. A mere whiff of magic suffices for the Quill. The Book, however, will often snap shut, refusing to be written upon until it receives sufficiently dramatic evidence of magical ability._

 _In fact, the Book's sternness has a purpose: its track record in keeping Squibs out of Hogwarts is perfect. Non-magic children born to witches and wizards occasionally have some small, residual aura of magic about them due to their parents, but once their parents' magic has worn off them it becomes clear that they will never have the ability to perform spells. The Quill's sensitivity, coupled with the Book's implacability, have never yet made a mistake. - R. Joanne"_

Minerva McGonagall was having a perfectly fine day. The article she was reading about the process of admissions was a well detailed and well researched one, and although not entirely accurate, got a lot of the important parts right.

She sipped absently at her scotch as she turned to look at one of her personal enchanted quills go to work on a stack of parchment as it wrote down the last of the letters to the accepted students for the year. It was magically connected to the Book of Admittance, using its magic to jot down their names and their addresses down to the last detail onto the envelope. The quill had been responsible for a lot of muggleborn rejections every year for quite a while, since most of them found it strange and creepy how accurately the letters knew their location. But the quill resisted any attempts at modification. It was a stickler for its own rules.

So McGonagall routinely went through and erased most of the personal details that the quill may have written down. It wasn't part of her job, but she did it out of a sense of duty to those muggleborn magicals that deserved a chance at harnessing their abilities and having a future in a place where they belonged.

With a sigh she placed down her scotch on the table in front of her. She had been drinking too much as of late. Memories of the war at its worst came more naturally at this time of the year, when the conflict would have been at its prime all those years back, and with those memories came the thoughts of her husband and her DMLE friends who had given their lives in the war, sending her into a drinking spiral that Albus Dumbledore often had to come and put a stop to.

And then there was Harry Potter.

She told herself that to treat him different from any other student would be a disservice to both him and herself. But how could she treat the son of James and Lily like any other student? But she would try, she promised herself. She had her regrets letting Dumbledore place him with those muggles. Every year she would go and check up on him every year, always finding him a bit too small for his age, wearing clothes thrice his size and working in the garden most of the time.

But hindsight was twenty-twenty. Besides, she had felt the blood wards around Surrey-felt them assess her worth and intent before letting her pass through. Harry Potter was untouchable in those wards. There was no doubt about that. And if anything was worth her suffering and guilt, it was Harry's safety.

McGonagall went to pick up her scotch for one last swig.

Perhaps in an alternate reality, where she was more inebriated than she was now, she would have pushed her tumbler off the table and into the ground, shattering it. Then, more irritated than before, she wouldn't have looked over that last batch of letters and would have waved her wand at them, spelling them away to the Post room directly which delegated Professors to handle the muggleborn and owled the rest of the letters to be posted.

However, in this reality, she took a swig and placed the tumbler back down without an incident and went over to the letter stack to look over the letters. After erasing the bedroom numbers off of the addresses of two muggleborn children, she finally came down to the youngest student of the year.

Confusion, guilt, and anger tore at her in a violent maelstrom of emotion as she looked down at the letter in her hand.

 _Mr. H. Potter_

 _The Cupboard under the Stairs_

 _4 Privet Drive_

 _Little Whinging_

 _Surrey_

Minerva McGonagall was having a perfectly fine day. And then she wasn't.

* * *

Ping!

 **You have slept in your own bed; HP and MP have been restored 100% each. All ailments and negative status effects have been cured.**

As Harry woke up, he was a bit surprised to realize that there were tears in his eyes. Quickly wiping them off, he snapped on Gamer's mind, cutting himself off from all emotions before they had the chance to grip him. Taking a deep breath, he got out of his cupboard and headed up to the bathroom to freshen up and start on the Dursleys' breakfasts.

Lately, he had taken to keeping Gamer's mind engaged all the time he was awake. The dreams and nightmares had started the day after he'd returned from the dungeon. The guilt and self-loathing that had been eating away at him throughout the course of the day had been too much and after realizing that the Gamer's mind didn't use up any of his mana and was capable of cutting him off from his emotions, he had decided to perpetually keep it active.

Unfortunately, he couldn't do it in his sleep, so the night was when his demons came to haunt him. He tried not sleeping, but honestly, the sheer boredom from the isolation of his tiny cupboard was even worse than the nightmares that came to him.

At first, the school officials had been insistent on keeping the students coming to school for the summer break in the name of extra classes, no doubt due to Ms. Roemmele's interference. She had most definitely realized that there was something strange about Harry. The strange looks in class…her eyes following him around in the playground like a hawk…the time he had overheard her muttering to herself about 'impossible amounts of accidental magic'…the missing of Carrow's Invisibility Cloak that he'd forgotten to pick up that night…Harry was sure of it. She knew that something was up with him, and she wanted to keep an eye on him.

So in order to avoid any form of suspicion, Harry just kept doing everything as he normally would, not even practicing magic around school anymore. Eventually, his strategy seemed to work, and she stopped following him around.

Harry often wondered if she had just assumed that Carrow had been caught off guard by his accidental magic or that some other wizard Samaritan had intervened, but he had neither the courage nor the wish to go find out what she thought.

The school had finally let up after Harry had accepted a rather rewarding quest involving some seriously smelly compounds from the Lab, a garden snake, and a Literature teacher who was terrified of both. It wasn't a prank in the best of spirits, considering the poor woman had fainted and then hospitalized after the prank, but Harry was finding himself more and more capable of ruthlessness with Gamer's Mind online all the time. Had he spent some time reflecting on his actions _without_ Gamer's Mind, he would've been rather horrified with himself.

But no emotions meant no limits.

Besides, he had Hogwarts to look forward to. His limited research looking for other people's descriptions hadn't yielded much since Vance and Diggle were the only magicals that were around ever since Carrow had left. So, on the day of his birthday, it was with an odd anticipation that Harry checked his post, waiting for the letter that promised to come.

But it wasn't there.

Harry was both a bit disappointed and worried. Johnathon had said that he'd make it, but what if it didn't? He had been fantasizing about all the ways he could get the letters as he made the morning tea, each fantasy more spectacular than the next. He had imagined a flurry of hundreds of owls attacking Vernon or a massive fire erupting in his room leaving behind the letter or even a portkey to take him to some ancient castle where they would evaluate his worth. But now…

The doorbell rang, pulling Harry from his thoughts.

Careful to avoid his Uncle, Harry ran down to get it. Vernon had gotten more free-handed with his punishments, somehow noticing that Harry didn't scar anymore. He could fight back of course. He could punch Vernon's guts inside out with one fist. But what would be the point? The rest of the Dursleys would probably just have evidence enough to shove him in a loony hospital and go off on their merry way. So he let Vernon be.

Harry clicked the lock open and pulled open the door, blinking with surprise at what, or rather who was there. Of all the ways Harry had imagined a letter from a school of magic to arrive, he had never expected it to turn up with its own personal carrier wearing a set of clothes that would only barely look normal on most people.

In the 18th century.

The woman handed him a thick letter and spoke while Harry stared at the ornate crest emblazoned on it and the Game window that had opened up in front of him.

 **You have acquired a letter to Hogwarts. Do you wish to attend Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and learn about all the cool shit you can do?**

 **YES/NO**

Harry blinked and pressed yes.

"Hello, Mr. Potter. My name is Professor Minerva McGonagall. I am the deputy headmistress at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and I am here to speak to you and your guardians about your education."

* * *

Harry's observe on the woman had yielded more information than just her name and position.

 **Minerva McGonagall**

 **Lv-49**

 **HP-17000/17000**

 **MP-9000/9000**

 **Race-Witch**

 **Str-13**

 **Vit-21**

 **Dex-22**

 **Int-38**

 **Wis-30**

 **Luc-14**

 **Minerva McGonagall is a witch and a registered Animagus. She has a distinct dislike for dark wizards and is loyal to Hogwarts, where she is Head of Gryffindor House, Transfiguration professor and currently, Deputy Headmistresss. She is a Master of Transfiguration and enjoys a good bottle of scotch and spending a quiet evening in her quarters.**

Wondering what 'Transfiguration' and 'Animagus' were, Harry amusedly watched from the end of the hallway as his uncle and aunt's faces slowly turn purple as she told them that she was here to take him shopping for his school supplies for his upcoming admission to Hogwarts. But his joy remained quite short-lived, as what McGonagall said next came to him as an unpleasant surprise.

"I trust you have told him everything you knew about him being a wizard and the conditions regarding his parents deaths."

For the past week, Harry had assumed that the Dursleys knew that they were lying, but had been relieved of the knowledge that their relatives were in any way involved with magic by those Obliviator people in order to preserve the secrecy of the magical world. Apparently, he had given them the benefit of the doubt that they did not deserve.

Not giving his aunt a chance to reply, Harry walked into the room, pushed his way around the aging Professor and cut in, "Hold on a second. You knew about all this?!" Harry shook the letter at her swiftly reddening aunt, "You knew what I was and you still lied to me? And what is this about my parent's deaths? You lot told me they died in a car crash."

"Knew!" shrieked Petunia suddenly, "Knew! Of course we knew! How could you not be, my obnoxiously abnormal sister being what she was? Oh, she got a letter just like that and disappeared off to that-that school and came home every vacation with her pockets full of frog spawn, turning teacups into rats. I was the only one who saw her for what she was - a freak! But for my mother and father, oh no, it was Lily this and Lily that, they were proud of having a witch in the family!"

She stopped to draw a deep breath and then went ranting on. It seemed to Harry as if she had been wanting to say all this for years.

"Then she met that Potter at school and they left and got married and had you, and of course I knew you'd be just the same, just as strange, just as - as - abnormal - and then, if you please, she went and got herself blown up and we got landed with you! At least we tried to make sure that you grew up to be normal."

Harry saw red.

He already knew that the Dursleys had lied to him, but somehow knowing the extent of their lies made it a hundred times worse. Rage filled his mind, ripping through his Gamer's mind shields. Suddenly, every object in the sitting room that was not bolted down started rattling. He gritted his teeth, desperately trying to keep himself from literally putting these pathetic mongrels six feet under.

"You sick woman…how could you?! I was your nephew and you just stuffed me in a bloody cupboard, pretended I didn't exist and lied to me for years! Is that your normal?! Is that your damn normal?! Tell me you daft lying giraffe!" The blue vase that stood on a stool near Petunia's seat exploded into tiny shards, slicing open a cut on Petunia's cheek.

"That's enough Mr. Potter." McGonagall said in a clipped tone, ignoring his Aunt's panicked shrieks as she waved her wand, healing the cut on his Aunt's cheek as well as making the pieces of the vase fly together and reassemble back on the stool, "Would you like to step out for a moment and get freshened up? We will be going out in a moment."

Harry simply gritted his teeth and obeyed, knowing that if he stayed in there for one more moment, he would end up deep frying the Dursleys with his magic. Who knew what sort of things the wizard police would do to him? Having seen those Obliviators at work, he was pretty sure he didn't want to find out.

He let himself out of the room before silently apparating outside to the garden window that looked into the sitting room. Crouching down, he carefully strained his ears. He wasn't going to miss out on the conversation where the Dursleys would finally get some of their comeuppances.

Ping!

 **Due to constant usage skill has evolved!**

 **Silent Apparition Lv-3 (44%)**

 **Destination, Determination, and Deliberation. Apparition is a magical method of transportation and is basically the magical action of traveling by having the user focus on the desired location in their mind. It is by far the fastest way to get to one's desired destination, but is tricky to pull off correctly and disastrous if botched up.**

 **Cost-60 MP per minute**

Waving away the screen, Harry focused on what was happening in the room through the window. McGonagall was speaking.

"…protections around your house were based on the crucial fact that Harry would feel at home in his aunt's house till he came of age and found his own home elsewhere. You have been toeing the line when it comes to that. Be warned Mrs. Dursley that if Harry at any point decides that this isn't his home anymore, then any protection you and your family have from some very dangerous people will be gone. You will have to pick up your entire life and move elsewhere."

Aunt Petunia looked far from cowed. She seemed to grow angrier and angrier as McGonagall kept talking until she finally burst out, "We didn't want the freak! We didn't want him to be dumped at our doorstep, but we still gave him a roof to live under and food to eat. He has had far more than he deserves. What more did you want from us? How is that not giving that freak a home?" Aunt Petunia shrieked.

"Well, I'm sure Professor Dumbledore would like to apologize to you for believing in your humanity," McGonagall's voice was ice cold as she stood up.

"I will be taking Mr. Potter and he shall be returning here to stay until September first. After that, you will not hear from him again. We will look into alternative arrangements for him next summer." Her voice grew even colder. "If you mistreat him I will know. If you harm him I will know. If you force him near that cupboard again, I will know."

"Forget about it! Absolutely not! He will not go and you will do nothing about it. Your kind has laws protecting normal people. You can't do jack squat to us you old hag." Vernon spoke for the first time, having regained his voice for the first time since Harry's outburst. Harry couldn't help but wonder from the look on McGonagall's face if he was going to get himself killed because McGonagall sure looked scary enough to do it.

A wave of killing intent hit Harry.

 **Bloodlust detected!**

'And there goes Vernon,' Harry thought with a grin.

"On the contrary Mr. Dursley, you'll find that I can do a number of things, most of which will not require me to lift my wand at all," her tone gained a sadistic edge. "I could send your address and your nephew's story out to the wizarding public. Our 'kind' don't particularly like child abusers. And if we are generous and assume that you aren't dead by the time they're done with you, I will release a full statement to the Muggle police. That will make sure that you end up rotting in a four by four cell for the rest of your miserable little lives. So if you feel like it, do feel free to _test me._ " her voice had devolved into a menacing whisper by the end of her statement.

Harry, while feeling rather touched that someone was doing this for him, permanently put McGonagall on his 'do not fuck with.' list. That woman meant business.

Quickly apparating back to the upper step of the stairs, Harry went to the bathroom and washed his face, making himself look like he'd been in the loo this whole time. Then he ran down the stairs and into the hallway, just as McGonagall stepped out from the room and called for him. Together, they stepped outside the house, and ignoring the half-hearted protests of the Dursleys, closed the door behind them.

"We are going to be apparating Mr. Potter. It is a form of Wizarding transport that can be quite uncomfortable at first, so I suggest you hold on tight" She said as she offered him a hand, grabbing her wand with the other and twisted on the spot pulling him with her to somewhere.

* * *

She wasn't wrong about it being uncomfortable.

Harry couldn't help but think that his own smoother apparition skills had to be something of a rarity in the Wizarding World if someone like McGonagall couldn't pull it off. He was a bit surprised when they appeared in the small warm shop right where he had flooed out of when he was following Dedalus Diggle. His surprise must have shown on his face because McGonagall noticed and commented on it.

"It may seem very exciting now Mr. Potter, but apparition can be quite dangerous when tried unsupervised. I would recommend you to wait till an appropriate age when you can learn it." Harry had to suppress a smirk at that. Of course, when he heard the next part his smirk vanished and all blood left his face. "Many wizards have lost body parts due to faulty apparition. We call it splinching, and while it is reversible, it is also extremely painful."

'Splinching,' Harry realized, 'So that was what happened to Miss Roemmele…Vance…and her hair.'

They made their way along Charing Cross Road towards the Leaky Cauldron. Along the way, Harry read the list and couldn't help but wonder how he was going to pay for all the stuff on the list and whether the dingy run down pub he remembered even sold all this. Sidestepping over a sleeping stray dog, he looked down at his list trying to make sense of some of the stuff in there.

 **HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY**

 **UNIFORM**

 **First-year students will require:**

 **Three sets of plain work robes (black)**

 **One plain pointed hat (black) for day wear**

 **One pair of protective gloves (dragon hide or similar)**

 **One winter cloak (black, silver fastenings)**

 **Please note that all pupils' clothes should carry name tags**

 **COURSE BOOKS**

 **All students should have a copy of each of the following:**

 **The Standard Book of Spells (Grade 1) by Miranda Goshawk**

 **A History of Magic by Bathilda Bagshot**

 **Magical Theory by Adalbert Waffling**

 **A Beginners' Guide to Transfiguration by Emetic Switch**

 **One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore**

 **Magical Drafts and Potions by Arsenius Jigger**

 **Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them by Newt Scamander**

 **The Dark Forces: A Guide to Self-Protection by Quentin Trimble**

 **OTHER EQUIPMENT**

 **wand**

 **cauldron (pewter, standard size 2)**

 **Setglass or crystal phials**

 **telescope set**

 **brass scales**

 **Students may also bring an owl OR a cat OR a toad**

 **PARENTS ARE REMINDED THAT FIRST YEARS ARE NOT ALLOWED THEIR OWN BROOMSTICKS**

Suddenly a screen popped up

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Buy all your school supplies!**

 **Reward,**

 **10,000 Exp**

 **Your very own money vault!**

 **Your personal wand!**

 **Failure,**

 **You guessed it, death**

 **Your goals will forever be unfinished!**

 **YES/NO?**

If Harry was a gambling man, or rather a gambling pre-teen, he would've bet that the Game was trying to use the Quests' 'death' consequence as a way to blackmail him into doing stuff. Death for not buying school supplies! Whoever had heard of such a thing?!

With a huff, Harry pressed yes and focused his gaze back on the road.

With some surprise, he noticed that he'd had the Gamer's mind off the whole time after his rage out at Petunia. He quickly snapped it back on and his face lost all traces of the excitement he'd felt since getting out of Privet Drive and all emotions became muted to him.

Through this veil of calmness, Harry noticed that they had reached the pub. Pushing open the door, they entered it. He was a bit surprised by the sheer size of the pub on the inside compared to the outside. He looked around at the robed patrons that were talking about everything and nothing and the warm homey vibe the pub gave out. He decided that he liked the place. Sticking close to McGonagall, he walked over with her to the common counter upon which the barkeep was leaning on.

"Good Mornin' Professor! The regular for ya? Been absolute ages since we saw you outta Hogwarts." He leaned over and noticed Harry, looking absolutely tiny as he tried to stand on his toes and look above the counter, "And who's this lad! What's your na…" His question faded away as he squinted at Harry's face and noticed his scar.

"Bless my soul," whispered the old barman. "Harry Potter... what an honor."

Harry's eyes widened as the middle-aged patron sitting on the stool beside him choked on his drink, before looking down at him with a shocked look.

"My goodness… it really is you," he said, grabbing his hand and shaking it as he cleared his voice and said much more loudly than before, " What an honor to meet you Mr. Potter."

The murmurs spread through the whole bar

"That's enough," Professor McGonagall said to the barkeep. Her hand tightened on Harry's shoulder. "Don't pester the boy, Tom, he is new to all this. Just arrange a private booth for us please."

"But is it him?" an old woman asked, "It's Harry Potter?" With a scraping sound, she got up from her chair.

"Ms. Crockford" McGonagall said warningly, her voice barely above a growl. The glare she shot around the room sent everyone cowering.

"I only want to shake his hand," the old woman muttered as she shakily walked over to him. With a kind smile, she bent low and stuck out a wrinkled hand which Harry, a bit confused and uncomfortable even through his Gamer's Mind shield, carefully shook. She used her other hand and grasped their joined hands tightly. Tears fell from the woman's eyes. "Welcome back Mr. Potter. Welcome back," she whispered to him.

"Thank you," Harry said, sending frightened looks at McGonagall. This was overwhelming to him, and he needed to get out of the situation.

Sensing his panic, McGonagall slammed her hand onto the counter. The whole place fell silent. "Enough," she said in a voice barely above normal, and with a smile and a nod Mrs. Crockford patted his cheek and turned her back on them. Within seconds, the crowd cleared up and Tom, the barman, led them to a small hidden little booth without any further trouble.

"Professor?" Harry said once they were sitting down. "What was that?"

Professor McGonagall was giving him an odd look. "Mr. Potter, how much do you know?" she asked. Harry shot her a questioning look. "How much have your relatives told you about how your parents died?"

Harry returned a steady look, he'd have to be pretty good at his lying to pull this off. Fortunately, the lie wasn't extreme at all and his always active Gamer's mind allowed his skills to gain an almost surgical precision.

"I was told that they were driving drunk and were killed in a car crash. However, from what you said earlier, I'm assuming that they lied to me. Now all I know is that they got 'blown up'. All that I can get from that is that it wasn't good."

"That is a correct assumption." Professor McGonagall said quietly.

"What happened?"

And thus, for the first of many times, Harry was told of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. The Dark Lord Voldemort.

A chill swept over Harry when he first uttered the name…his own mana fluctuated in sync with the very magic that saturated the air of the pub even as he pronounced the word. It seemed for a moment as if the age-old adage that names have power was truer than most thought it to be.

"The Dark Lord," the Professor told him, "had raged upon Wizarding Britain for a long number of years. His followers, the Death Eaters, also called the knights of Walpurgis, had followed in his wake. He was not the most powerful dark lord to ever come, but he was certainly the most brilliant. He was as cunning and manipulative as he was ruthless and vicious, inspiring almost fanatic loyalty amongst his followers. Their numbers weren't too great at first, but soon he enchanted the minds of youngsters with the thought of beguiling magic and elders with the draw of incomprehensible power. They flocked to him."

She paused to take a drink of water before continuing.

"Soon, he had his people in every major wizarding organization. It was as if he was building a lethal blade at the throat of the wizarding world, and all it took was one invitation for him to use it. In one fell swoop, he almost beheaded it. Anyone who stood in his path; and people did; he killed. Blood lined whichever path the Dark Lord wished to walk. No one really knew what his true motives were, though his since followers claimed it to be blood purity, that was what the world believed."

Harry kept staring at the table. His eyes were closed and he spoke with naught a waver in his voice "So what happened then?"

"The Dark Lord came to Godric's Hollow," Professor McGonagall said in a whisper. "The Dark Lord killed James, and he killed Lily. Then he tried to kill you."

"The Killing Curse strikes directly at the soul, severing it from the body. It cannot be blocked, cannot be shielded from, and whomever it strikes, they die," she took a deep breath, "No one ever lived after he decided to kill them. He'd killed some of the best witches and wizards of the age. The McKinnons, the Bones, the Prewetts. But you were only a baby, and you lived. The Killing Curse rebounded and destroyed the Dark Lord."

"Have you ever wondered how you got that mark on your forehead? That is no ordinary cut. That's the mark of a survivor of a powerful, evil curse touching you. _That_ is why you're famous, Harry. That is why you are a hero."

Harry kept staring at his hands laying on the table. Fighting through the strange painful coiling of his stomach, he finally looked up. He could

"We should be going. My relatives would expect me to be back soon. And we need to buy all this magic stuff," he said, making to get up from the seat.

Frowning at the lack of expression on the boy's face, McGonagall grew worried. She could only take a guess about what was happening in the young boy's mind, and she wasn't too far off the truth. In a rather frightening way, it reminded herself of her own alcoholism. Debating between staying out of it and maintaining her distance from a student, she finally decided to throw caution into the wind.

"Not yet." She said, and Harry paused, frowning before he sat down. Taking a deep breath, she spoke, "I know a thing or two about losing people Mr. Potter. I have lived through the war. And I also know a thing or two about pushing away your grief so that it will not hurt you anymore."

Harry looked up at her with the same blank expression. In his mind, he felt some muted surprise through the Gamer's mind that her guess about him shielding himself from his own emotions was so close to the real truth.

"But it doesn't help," she continued, "It ends up hurting your life, taking away what makes you yourself. You must acknowledge the grief Mr. Potter, and only then can you truly move past it."

Harry's expression did not waver, but he was well aware of the maelstrom of emotion roiling around behind his shields. He couldn't…he couldn't push himself into that.

"But it hurts," he said, trying to somehow convey to her the magnitude of what he was hiding from. The betrayal of the Dursleys, killing Johnathon, and the tragedy of his parents' death…he couldn't find the right words…

"It hurts to think about them. I remember that night. I think," he finally said in a small voice as he looked back at his hands. He heard a gasp from the professor but didn't stop. He couldn't, "I have dreams about it sometimes. Green light. Her pleading with him to kill her and let me live. It hurt even when I didn't know who she was. Now…"

"I know Harry," Harry looked up at her use of his first name. Her wet eyes were somewhere far away, lost in some distant memory, "And it always will. But that hurt, that pain in your heart is what tells you that you are human. That you are a good person. And in the end, it will always make you stronger."

* * *

After that, Harry had taken down his Gamer's mind for the first time in a while. It took him a good twenty minutes to calm himself down. He spent that time sobbing into his hands in that quiet booth in the corner of the pub. Professor McGonagall simply sat there, rubbing his back and waiting for him to pull himself back together.

Slowly the tears stopped and Harry eventually pulled himself together.

It didn't take long for him to decide that he was feeling objectively better after letting all of that out of himself. He looked at the professor, intending to thank her, but as much as he tried, no words came out. She caught his eyes, and something in them must have conveyed what he wanted to say, because she gave him an understanding smile.

"Now eat up Mr. Potter," she said, her face morphing into a rather mischievous smile he didn't even think it was capable of, "I don't think Lily and James would ever forgive me if I let you get your first look at the Diagon Alley on an empty stomach."

Soon, they finished up their meals and after applying on a simple magical disguise on him, McGonagall led them to the back of the pub. Harry was just starting to feel a bit confused about why they were standing in front of an old brick wall, when she answered his unspoken question,

"Pay attention, Mr. Potter, You'll need to remember this. Three up, two across. . ." she muttered as she tapped her wand on the wall. Just as Harry was about to ask what she was doing, the wall hollowed into a hole which shivered and expanded into a huge archway, revealing a long row of shops with signs advertising cauldrons and dragon livers and dozens upon dozens of wizards bustling around, getting their shopping done.

His mind worked overtime trying to process all the colors, sounds and smells that assaulted his senses, and somewhere in there, Harry didn't realize that his mouth had fallen open. 'If anything is magic, this place is,' he thought as the immense amount of mana that saturated the air hit him and left him speechless.

"After you Mr. Potter."

And thus they walked forwards, together, into the wizarding world.

There were merchants hawking Hermes Bags- "Made with real Flubberworm hide! 10 sickles each!" and "Self Serving Knives! Forks! Spoons!" There were pants that turned you green and candy that made your ears smoke. The buildings looked like a child had glued them together for a crafts project. None of it was practical. None of it was cohesive. None of it made sense.

It was the best thing Harry had ever seen.

His head whipped around like a swivel, taking in every single thing that was in there. He would've used Gamer's Mind, but a part of him just wanted to feel the pure unadulterated wonder of walking through the world of magic for the first time. The people…the sounds…the wares…suddenly, he realized something.

"Professor. How am I going to pay for all this?" he asked, waving his hand at the list he held, "I'm pretty sure Uncle Vernon would have an aneurysm and die if he was asked to pay for my education," he paused, "On second thought, I think we should tell him to pay for it."

"Enough of your cheek Mr. Potter," McGonagall said, although there was a small smirk on her face. Her meeting with Vernon hadn't exactly left the best of impressions on her. Answering his question, she said, "And that won't be necessary. Your parents have left you with a substantial inheritance. While their assets had been depleted by quite a bit during the war, you should have enough to comfortably get through your Hogwarts years, especially since your tuition is already paid in full due to donations by several well-wishers of yours. Not to mention that you've received several monetary gifts from many people."

Harry frowned as they passed Slug's & Jigger's apothecary, "Could you please pass their names along to me? I'd really like to thank them. They must think I'm a horrible person for not replying to anyone."

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Say thank you to your benefactors you ungrateful mongrel!**

 **Reward,**

 **5,000 Exp**

 **Better relations with the magical world**

 **Failure,**

 **Everyone hates you!**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry quickly pressed yes and refocused on what McGonagall was saying.

"Its common knowledge that you have been out of contact with wizarding world since that fateful day Mr. Potter. I doubt any of them expected a reply. Although…a letter from you would certainly make their days. Very well then. I shall arrange to have the names owled to you Mr. Potter," she said as they made their way towards the giant gilded doors of Gringotts.

After a clipped conversation with the goblin teller; who Harry realized with some embarrassment was taller than him; and a heart-stopping roller coaster ride deep into the cavernous caves below the huge bank, they finally reached his vault.

"You get paid to do this?!" Harry exclaimed breathlessly at the goblin that was operating the cart. It grinned with all its teeth and picked up the lantern to get out of the cart. Professor McGonagall followed after them and handed the key to his vault to the goblin, who then put it in the keyhole while Harry restlessly tried to fix his hair, which had come to resemble a cuckoo's nest after two horses and a sheep had defiled it.

The moment the doors opened, however, his hands dropped to his sides and his mouth hung open.

Heaps upon heaps of golden Galleons. Stacks of silver Sickles. Piles of bronze Knuts. Harry could only just stand there, and stare with his mouth open at the family vault. From just outside the door of the vault, Professor McGonagall watched him, leaning casually against the wall. But her eyes were intent, and even without Gamer's Mind, it was fairly obvious why to Harry once he picked his jaw off the floor. Being dropped in front of a pile of gold was a test of character so ancient it'd have fit well in one of Ms. Roemmele's fairy tales.

McGonagall would expect him to jump with greed at the gold and judge him bad, or ask her about how much money he should take and judge him good. Harry smirked.

'Well. That's just a setup asking to be screwed with,' he thought with a smirk, before he turned back towards the goblin that stood near the door and started asking questions.

Twenty minutes later, ignoring the questioning looks from a very confused McGonagall, a tired Griphook the goblin answered Harry's final question "A taxation fee of one twenty-fifth part would suffice for the smelting of the coins," he said warily.

Harry had just made him explain every facet of the wizarding economy in detail. Gold to silver conversion rates, which seemed to be lower than the muggle ones he'd read on last Sunday's newspaper, how the financial system worked, and whether they had a stock market system, which they did.

Harry nodded. "Thank you very much, Mr. Griphook," he said and went into his vault contemplating his new plan. Without the extra load of shielding his mind from emotions, Gamer's mind worked as it should, making logical connections and supplying information to Harry whenever he needed it.

The wizarding economy was almost completely isolated from the Muggle economy except for the regular influx of muggleborn bringing more money into the wizarding economy. All he had to do was melt down some galleons, exchange it in the Muggle world for a bucketload of silver, bring in the bucketload of silver, smelt it all to Sickles, exchange the Sickles for Galleons, melt the gold down, take the gold to the Muggle world, exchange it for more silver than he'd started with, and repeat, thereby opening up an infinite loop of legal loophole money for Harry to exploit.

Ping!

 **Due to your skillful reasoning of a master plan you have gained +3 Wis and +2 Int!**

Why had no muggleborn seen this? Or maybe they had, and they didn't have the resources to pull something like that off? Maybe they were too enchanted by the magic they'd just discovered? Maybe they were silenced? In any case, Harry realized that with a plan that obvious, someone had to have already done this in the past when gold was even cheaper in the Muggle world. If he were to ever take a shot at it, he would need more information than just what he'd gained in half a day in the wizarding world. He didn't have any intention of getting caught.

With that decided, Harry took the pouch and started filling it with coins. When he had reached thirty, Professor McGonagall coughed. "I think that will be more than enough to pay for your school supplies, Mr. Potter."

Harry paused. It was, but he had other plans too. With a sheepish smile, he nodded and opened up his inventory in front of himself. Pretending to stumble as he stood up, he fell face first into a pile of galleons and sickles, taking a good portion of it into his inventory.

"Do be careful Mr. Potter." The professor chided as they headed back for another roller coaster ride to the surface.

 **MONEY- 175£ / 2042G 182S 25K**

"Of course Professor," Harry smiled as he read his balance, "Always."

* * *

They'd quickly made their way out of the bank and started crossing things off the list diagonally across the Diagon alley, starting at Slug's and Jigger's for the brass scales, crystal phials, and a set of five cauldrons one each of gold, silver, brass, copper, and pewter.

"It is cheaper when bought in a set and you will need the rest in later years as well. Each cauldron has its own uses, Mr. Potter. Pewter is all rounded and for beginners. Brass enhances stability while copper enhances potency. Silver is used as a catalyst for speed. Gold is an important ingredient in some powerful potions and needs to be added too gradually and slowly to add by hand, so every time you stir it, you're eroding a bit of gold off the cauldron and mixing it into the potion. I suspect you won't need the pewter one for long, your mother being as good as she was at potions." McGonagall had said while picking up a package of general ingredients for him. Harry had then and there promised to himself that he would do well in potions.

Upon further questioning, she had told him that she was not very proficient in potions, but a man named Snape, who would be his teacher, was, "You should talk to him sometime Mr. Potter. He was a friend of your mother," she'd said before muttering under her breath, "Lord knows he needs it."

"I'll expect your full attention in all your classes Mr. Potter. I will not have any fooling around in my Transfiguration classes," she'd added a few minutes later while she was strong-arming a green haired shopkeeper called Sean Mcloughlin into giving him a state of the art brass colored Muggle telescope for half the price that it would have cost him in the Muggle world.

Harry couldn't help but be glad to have her with him. McGonagall's many years as a teacher had apparently earned her quite some respect. Prices dropped by the sickles as the woman kept getting recognized by old students, and all the while she kept giving him tidbits of information that greatly help him understand this new world he found himself him. With a sturdy feather light trunk holding his new clothes, books, and purchases, the duo headed towards the highly anticipated wand shop, Harry getting increasingly nervous as they drew closer.

"Calm down Mr. Potter. You're eroding the sidewalk. There is very little that you have to do for the process. It will mostly involve Mr. Ollivander doing most of the work." McGonagall said, sensing Harry's excitement and nervousness.

The shop was narrow and shabby. Peeling gold letters over the door read Ollivanders': Makers of Fine Wands since 382 B.C. A single wand lay on a faded purple cushion in the dusty window. As they entered, a bell tinkled and a man emerged from between the huge shelves that housed thousands and thousands of wands in their boxes. Harry looked around warily as the man put back the wand he was polishing. There was some sort ancient magic in the air, curiously drifting around him, sensing his worth. McGonagall had retreated to a nearby seat and the man had come closer and stood barely a foot away, staring at him with those silver eyes that seemed to shine like brilliant moons in the gloomy shop.

"Mr. Potter," he finally spoke, "You have your mother's eyes. It seems only yesterday she was in here herself, buying her first wand. Ten and a quarter inches long, swishy, made of willow. Nice wand for charm work."

Ollivander moved closer to them. Harry wished he would blink. Those silvery eyes were a bit creepy. "Your father, on the other hand, favored a mahogany wand. Eleven inches. Pliable. A little more power and excellent for transfiguration. Well, I say your father favored it but it's really the wand that chooses the wizard, of course." Ollivander had come so close that he and Harry were almost nose to nose. He could see himself reflected in those misty eyes.

"And that's where..." Ollivander touched the lightning scar on Harry's forehead with a long, white finger. "I'm sorry to say I sold the wand that did it," he said softly, "Thirteen-and-a-half inches. Yew. Powerful wand, very powerful, and in the wrong hands... well, if I'd known what that wand was going out into the world to do..."

He shook his head and then, to Harry's relief, spotted McGonagall. "Minerva! How good to see you again... Fir, nine and a half inches, elegant, refined and very powerful. It has served you well hasn't it?"

"It has," said McGonagall. Ollivander nodded and turned to Harry.

"Well, now - Mr. Potter. Let me see." He pulled a long tape measure with silver markings out of his pocket. "Which is your wand arm?"

"Er - well, I'm right-handed," said Harry.

"Hold out your arm. That's it." He let the tape measure fly from his hand and start measuring Harry from shoulder to finger, then wrist to elbow, shoulder to floor, knee to armpit and round his head. As it measured, Ollivander moved back into the shelves he'd emerged from and spoke, "Every Ollivander wand has a core of a powerful magical substance, Mr. Potter. I prefer unicorn hairs, phoenix tail feathers, and the heartstrings of dragons. No two wands are the same, just as no two unicorns, dragons, or phoenixes are quite the same. And of course, you will never get good results with another wizard's wand."

Ollivander was flitting around the shelves, taking down boxes. "That will do," he said, and the tape measure rolled itself up and flew right back to Ollivander's pocket.

"Right then, Mr. Potter. Try this one. Beechwood and dragon heartstring. Nine inches. Nice and flexible. just take it and give it a wave. "Harry took the wand and, feeling foolish, waved it around a bit, but Mr. Ollivander snatched it out of his hand almost at once, "Maple and phoenix feather. Seven inches. Quite whippy. Try it." Harry tried - but he had hardly raised the wand when it, too, was snatched back by Ollivander.

"No, no -here, ebony and unicorn hair, eight and a half inches, springy. Go on, go on, and try it out." Harry tried. And tried. He had no idea what Ollivander was waiting for. The pile of tried wands was mounting higher and higher on the single spindly chair in the room.

At around an hour's time, McGonagall grew impatient and spoke up.

"Excuse me Mr. Ollivander. I will just be finishing up a few purchases outside. Mr. Potter, please wait for me here after your selection is finished." And she let herself out. Harry turned back to Ollivander to find him standing straighter, his eyes sharper than they'd ever been and an unnerving smirk on his face.

"Now that she is gone, would you like to show me the wand that you have been using. Mr. Potter"

A tense pause filled the room for a minute while Harry considered what to do. He could run. He could attack. Or he could talk.

"How did you know about that?" Harry asked warily, pulling out the Riddler's wand from his pocket and holding it at the ready. With an amused look, Ollivander took it from his hand.

"I am a wand maker, Mr. Potter. It is my job to know things about my customer's wands." Ollivander smirked as he looked at the bone white wand that Harry handed him.

"Yes. I believe this wand will obey you just fine. You've won its allegiance fair and square. Of course, Mr. Riddle has modified it, despite my many warnings not to do so," he said disapprovingly as he fussed over the shape. "Bone handle. Such a melodramatic one he was," he muttered as he cracked the bone open with a knife and washed the wand with some strange smelling green water, that somehow ended up giving the white a more golden sheen. He wiped it off before handing it back to Harry.

"There you go. I've taken the liberty of washing it clean of its dark magic. Perhaps it can one day redeem itself with you. Now, do hold on for a minute, I believe I know which wand will choose you. Wait here."

He headed back to the shelves and reemerged with an old looking box. "One of my best," he said as he handed it to Harry, upon whose touch the wand let loose a bunch of golden ribbons of light. "Holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple. In its heart it holds the tail feather of the same phoenix as your other wand, making them brothers. They will serve you well."

"Why are you doing this?" Harry asked, "Why give me two wands?"

"Because you will need it," Ollivander said before he disappeared into the shelves again.

Ping!

 **Quest Completed!**

 **Buy all your school supplies!**

 **Reward,**

 **10,000 Exp**

 **Your very own money vault!**

 **Your personal wand!**

Ping!

 **You have gained a level!**

 **Harry Potter**

 **Health-400/400**

 **Mana-200/200**

 **The Gamer**

 **Title-The Boy who Lived**

 **(+20 Str,+20 Vit, +20 Dex, while in Home Turf)**

 **Level-8 Exp-16940/19200**

 **Race-wizard**

 **STR-8(+20)=28**

 **VIT-4(+3+20)=27**

 **DEX-6(+3+20)=29**

 **INT-11**

 **WIS-10**

 **LUC-14**

 **POINTS-15**

 **MONEY- 175 / 2042G 182S 25K**

 **Harry Potter is a wizard, the son of Lily Potter and James Potter. He has bad eyesight making it difficult for him to do well in class. His magic has gotten him trouble over the years in various schools. Strange things seem to happen around him. Harry is unaware of who he is, and wishes to find meaning in his life. Harry loves his mother, and hates the Dursleys.**

 **Status- wizard, giving Harry - +3 VIT, +3 DEX and the ability to control magic, talk to snakes, control his appearance and look cool.**

After waving away the screens, Harry awkwardly sat there waiting for McGonagall to show back up. After a while, a curious little question popped into his head.

"So why only three?"

"Pardon?" Ollivander said, peeking up from above a shelf. He was on the ladder.

"Why only 3 types of cores?" Harry repeated, "The books said that there were many types of creatures with magic."

"Good question," Ollivander replied, looking a bit excited to have heard someone ask a question about his profession to him. He climbed down and a chair dragged itself from the depths of the store, upon which he sat.

"Prior to my own proprietorship of the family business, wizards used a wide variety of wand cores. A customer would often present the wand maker with a magical substance to which they were attached, or had inherited, or by which their family swore. I, however, insisted that the best wands would never be produced merely by encasing the whiskers of a pet Kneazle or the stalk of a Dittany plant that once saved a wizard's father from poisoning, or the mane of a kelpie a witch had once met on holiday in Scotland in the customer's favorite wood. The best wands should have cores of immensely powerful magical substances, expertly enclosed in specially selected and complementary wand woods, the result to be matched to an owner with whom the wand itself felt the most affinity," he spoke passionately before pausing and chuckling.

"There was initially substantial resistance to my new way of crafting wands by the simple-minded folk. But it swiftly became clear that Ollivander wands were, forgive my lack of humility, superior to anything that had come before. My new methods of locating wand woods and core substances marrying them together and matching them to ideal owners are all, of course, secrets that are coveted by my rival wand makers worldwide."

"So . . . any chance you'll tell me about them?" Harry asked only half-jokingly. He'd felt the magic the old man was weaving and he knew he had to ask.

To his surprise, Ollivander chuckled, "Meet me after Hogwarts and we'll talk."

* * *

After much insistence, Professor McGonagall had finally agreed to let him off near Charing Cross, but not before making him promise to catch a taxi and go straight back home. Harry had no intention to go through the painful process of being apparated by someone else. Quickly, ducking into the bathroom of a nearby shop, he had shoved all his new stuff into his inventory and apparated on his own back to Number 4. Upon knocking on the door, Vernon had simply dragged him upstairs and shoved him into the cluttered second bedroom of Dudley's and left to talk to his wife in a hushed tone that Harry couldn't make out from his room.

Honestly, he couldn't bring himself to care about them anymore.

Thinking about how Professor McGonagall's words in the Leaky Cauldron had helped him more than she would ever know, he quickly started to rearrange and sort out his inventory, sorting his clothes and books out into separate boxes, taking extra care with the letter he had to deliver to Johnathon's son, when suddenly he came upon a book that he'd picked up in the forest. It was brown and had a single label on its cover, 'ID Create/Escape.'

With some hesitation, Harry picked the book up and suddenly a blue notification came.

Ping!

 **You have obtained a skill book! Would you like to learn the skill, 'Instant Dungeon Create' & 'Instant Dungeon Escape'?**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry gave a grim smile. This was his reward for killing an innocent man…

With a sigh, he pressed the yes button and suddenly the book burst into flames, letting the new knowledge flood into Harry's mind.

Ping!

 **You have learned two new skills!**

 **ID Create, Lv-1 (0%)**

 **Used to create Instant Dungeons. Higher the level, stronger the dungeon.**

 **Current list-**

 **Empty Dungeon- no monsters.**

 **ID Escape, Lv-1 (0%)**

 **Used to escape from Instant Dungeons.**

Harry smiled at that and quickly closed the boxes. A lot happened in the dungeon. He had faced death and had come back stronger for it. He certainly felt strong, and yet the price of his strength weighed strong on him.

Still, at the end of it all, he had finally found a place where he belonged.

That night, for once, no nightmares came his way…only sweet dreams of a green-eyed red-haired woman and a man who looked like him lulled him to a peaceful rest.

* * *

 **"But that hurt, that pain in your heart is what tells you that you are human" is the line that kinda sets the tone for the story. So long as Harry still feels that pain, he will stay human. The day he stops…well, that's for a later chapter. ;-)**

 **The Gamer's Mind failing in front of spiders thing from the last chapter was me setting up a plot point for Book 4. Let's just say that in ' _fixing_ ' Harry, the entities might've messed with his memories a bit. There is a certain thematic undertone that I'm going for with these books. Book 1 has Harry discovering his powers. Book 2 has Harry discovering the people around him. Book 3 has him discovering the source of his powers. Book 4 has him discovering his own past. Book 5, is of course, the culmination of all that.**


	7. Book-I:On Trains & Training

Chapter 6:

"ID Create" a rather frail looking boy in tattered clothes intoned as he walked along a sidewalk in the bustling streets of London. A man sitting on a bench on the other side of the road blinked as the boy walked behind a streetlight pole on one side and didn't come of the other.

That boy, Harry Potter, was having a whale of a time by startling the life out of random strangers on the street. He'd discovered soon after that fateful day of magic shopping in Diagon Alley that sneaking up on people using his Instant Dungeons and startling them by popping out of nowhere was a rather clever little cheat for leveling up his Sneaking, ID Create, and ID Escape skills. He couldn't wait to get to the point where he would be able to gain access to some other forms of Dungeons that involved fighting enemies and leveling up his skills. He had read in one of the many gaming pamphlets he'd perused that Dungeons were basically grinding heavens, supplying the player with enemies to fight in waves until the wanted to stop. Harry couldn't wait to get into that dungeon, but at the moment, he was having fun in this one too.

Harry looked up at the red sky of the dungeon.

Through a series of Observes and discoveries, he had learned quite a few things about Instant Dungeons. For one, there seemed to be no moving objects in there. No wind, no cars, no people, no animals. If it could move, it didn't exist in the ID.

Another crucial thing he'd learned the hard way was that his position in the ID at any moment was equivalent to the position in the real world. He had once entered into an ID, broken open his room's lock in the ID, and then used ID Escape a while later in the garden expecting to exit back in his room, only to pop out into reality barely a foot behind Petunia. Luckily, she had not noticed him appear out of nowhere, but he _had_ then been forced to listen to Vernon rant and rave for hours on end. Luckily, old Mrs. Figg had come over to taste some of Petunia's new baked muffins, and she had managed to resolve the situation before it got too bad.

Mrs. Figg...that had been another little surprise for Harry.

A chance Observe directed at her had ended up revealing much more than Harry had anticipated. As it turned out, she was actually a member of the Order of Phoenix placed in Privet Drive to guard him. Harry couldn't help but wonder how someone like her could be considered a 'guard'. Perhaps she was some sort of British Batman type of person, an innocent old lady by day and crime-fighting vigilante with bulging muscles and secret gadgets at night…probably not though, considering her stats as he remembered them.

 **Arabella Figg**

 **Lv-30**

 **HP-1500/1500**

 **Race-Squib**

 **Str-8**

 **Vit-14**

 **Dex-3**

 **Int-21**

 **Wis-43**

 **Luc-12**

 **Arabella Figg is a non-magical born of two magical parents and a member of the Order of the Phoenix. She was assigned to watch over Harry in exchange for a house and a small pension for her old age. Although initially, she did it as a job, she has come to like Harry as a humble and clever little boy she thinks he is. She loves her son despite him abandoning her in an old age home prior to her joining the Order.**

Harry shook his head and walked over to the nearest ledge of the Southbank Center, on which he was standing on. The view of the London spanning out in front of him against the backdrop of the red sky was as intimidating as it was awe inspiring.

Ping!

 **Due to extreme use and climbing your Sprinting skill has evolved.**

 **Parkour Lv-15 (30%)**

 **Your speed in parkouring is that of a superhuman being-28 miles an hour.**

He had been working on improving his Parkour and Dex for almost 8 hours now, and the results were starting to take great shape. Harry waved away the message and refocused on the sight before him, focusing on the newly finished Canary Wharf building, which still had most of its scaffolding left around it. Harry wondered if there was anyone mad enough to attempt a climb that high with no safety equipment.

"Well, there is now," he muttered with a smirk as he stepped ahead and dropped off the 300-foot building.

* * *

That night, Harry was lying on his brand new bed in his brand new room. Of course, neither of those were brand new, the bed being almost half a decade old and the room being all but a bin for Dudley's useless stuff. But they were new to him, and that was all that mattered. Above him, his inventory lay sprawled open as he sorted through his stuff and arranged them all into neat stacks and boxes.

Sorting through his inventory had become a pleasant stress-relieving thing for him lately, and now, filled with any and all useful things he could find in Dudley's pile, his inventory was in dire need of some stacking up. His room, after some clearing up, it had become quite livable. A bit small, but it was the best Harry had ever had. That, combined with the thought of not having to come back to the Dursleys the next summer was what was tiding him over the month of August.

Harry pulled out the Potion's textbook by Jigger and the reference book that McGonagall had made him buy. Harry was about to set the reference book called _Introduction to Reactions by Fine Brothers_ aside when he suddenly noticed something in the dark of his room that he hadn't noticed in the broad daylight in Flourish  & Blotts.

The book was glowing with a faint light.

Curious about what the cause was, Harry grabbed it and started fumbling around with it.

Ping!

 **You have obtained a skill book! Would you like to learn the skill, 'Potions'?**

 **YES/NO?**

Looking back at the stack of books he'd pulled out, Harry noticed that while all the school course books were entirely devoid of any glow, all the reference books for each of his subjects were glowing.

Harry grinned. This was going to be fun!

* * *

A couple of days after that night, the Dursleys had plans to visit the new traveling circus that had set up shop in London. Unfortunately for them, none of their neighbors were available to take Harry in for the day. Afraid that the freak would ruin their day, the Dursleys had gladly and immediately agreed when Harry had told them that he'd get himself home before nightfall and let himself out of the car near the Royal Library.

With the Dursleys gone, Harry, of course, was entirely too delighted to see shelves after shelves of books, and even more so when he noticed that quite a few of those were giving off the barely visible glow that seemed to only be visible to him. Without further ado, he took to the books with a gusto, not even realizing that his Int had gone up by 3 even before he had finished his second book.

 **INT - 14**

He, however, did look up from the _Richard Feynman Lectures_ when a ping rang in his ears.

Ping!

 **A new skill has been made due to hard work and practice!**

 **Science, Lv-1 (80%)**

 **A branch of knowledge that deals with the workings of the world.**

 **Physics- Basic concepts of physical science.**

 **Chemistry- Basic concepts of chemical science.**

 **Botany-Basic concepts of science dealing with flora.**

 **Zoology- Basic concepts of science dealing with fauna.**

Science…in a world with magic, science could at times feel so pointless, but if the Game agreed that it was a skill worth having, then it was something to work on. Harry waved it away and turned back to his book.

* * *

"Boy, I better not hear from Petunia that you reached home late," Vernon growled at Harry as he walked out of the Grunnings' main premises and into the small sea of warehouses and production buildings that surrounded them.

Harry didn't care. He had a man to follow and a mission to complete.

A couple of days prior to that fateful day, Mr. Grunnings had paid a courtesy visit to the Dursleys' home, bringing with him some expensive wine and a can of caviar the Dursleys could barely conceive of affording. Harry, of course, had been locked in his bedroom beforehand, but Mr. Grunnings had insisted on a complete house tour of his 'favorite' employee, and the Dursleys had been forced to reveal the existence of their abnormal little nephew.

The fat greasy man had bent down, grinning at Harry as he offered him a hand. Prompted by Vernon's furious miming from behind his guest, Harry had shaken his hand, accidentally pressing a little harder than he'd intended to.

"Ohho!" Mr. Grunnings had exclaimed, getting onto his feet, "Your nephew has the handshake of a man Vernon. Tell me, young man, have you ever had any interests in drills and construction equipment as such?"

Harry started to shake his head, but seeing Vernon turn redder than a tomato, he quickly turned his shake into a nod. Grunnings could barely seem to contain himself.

"Well! Then it is settled! You, young man, simply _must_ come and see our facilities tomorrow."

And settled it was. No matter how much Vernon had tried to protest, Grunnings had been set on Harry going to visit their factory, and after he'd Observed the man, so was Harry.

 **Winston Grunnings**

 **Lv-28**

 **HP-4000/4000**

 **Race-Muggle**

 **Str-25**

 **Vit-13**

 **Dex-6**

 **Int-14**

 **Wis-8**

 **Luc-13**

 **Degenerate human trafficker and owner of a drilling firm called Grunnings', Winston is a major player in a multi-million-pound criminal enterprise. He has been known to have an unhealthy obsession with extremely underage girls and wishes to close his last deal tomorrow and retire to the Bahamas.**

Then and there, Harry hadn't gotten a quest alert, but he had decided on stopping him anyway. Besides, it even made sense from a pragmatic point of view, because so far, the one noticeable trend he had found in all of wizardkind was that wizards tended to be extremely physically weak, probably because they tended to use magic for all their activities. If they were all like that, then if he somehow got close enough to one, he could take down one even twice his level. Missions like these were perfect for growing his physical stats.

And so he had gone to Grunnings' the next day, trying to get as much information as he could about _where_ the deal was happening. But no matter how much he tried to Observe and find out more things about that last deal, he couldn't find anything. So he'd resorted to his last tactic. Following Grunnings around until something popped up.

As it turned out, it just had.

Disappearing from Vernon's gaze into a space between two warehouses, Harry quickly shimmied up onto the roof of a warehouse along a pipe. Once he found a high enough vantage point, a quick sweeping gaze of the area with Gamer's Mind immediately found Grunnings entering one of the older, more debilitated looking production buildings. It was a fairly large one with five floors and a skylight on the roof. More suspiciously though, it had a very buff looking guard armed with a gun guarding the front door.

Quickly apparating onto the roof of that building, Harry found an open skylight and leaned in to assess what was going on just as Grunnings walked into the room.

A pair of chairs stood in the middle of the room, on one of which Grunnings sat down, and on the other sat a thin man in a pinstriped suit holding a briefcase.

Harry had a simple plan. He'd wait till they brought out some sort incriminating enough evidence that the police could use to put them away, then disable them and leave them tied up with the evidence in front of a police station so that the police could do their job. All in all, the situation that night would have been a lot less painful for those involved had they not dragged out the girl.

She looked about 16 and was barely dressed in her tattered clothes. Her face was sunken, her limbs were rickety, and the way she flinched whenever one of the fat man's bodyguard moved did not bode well for how she'd been treated by them.

For a fraction of a second, Harry saw red and Gamer's Mind wavered, but it recovered near instantly, shielding Harry from his instinctive rage. He paused. He knew he had to do something, but he couldn't charge in fireballing. Each and every one of those goons and thugs had a gun. It was best to first listen to what they were saying.

"So has your friend in the mask terrified you so much that feel the need to do your deals halfway across the world now? I didn't think kingpins of criminal empires were that easily scared by masked costume fetishists," Grunnings said with a smirk.

"Don't be idiotic Mr. Grunnings. We are here trying to shake the tails Interpol has been sending. Tails that found their leads thanks to leaks in _your_ organization. And I would advise you against so flippantly addressing my employer. He doesn't like being spoken about in that tone." the man in the suit said, his voice cold as steel.

"Well, he isn't here now, is he? And why doesn't he try to arrange a distraction for all of his managers at the same time? Does he realize how humiliating it is to have kids swarming all over his building in the name of 'work visit day'?" Grunnings shot back. But the tremble in his voice gave away his nervousness. Whoever this kingpin bloke was, he was dangerous. "Anyhow, this little girl is a special one. We saw her do some really…inhuman things, and thought she might be of some experimental value to your client."

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Destroy the goons, help the girl escape!**

 **Reward,**

 **3000 Exp**

 **Failure,**

 **See that girl? Yeah. That one. The goons will violate her tonight and later she will be drained of her bone marrow by scientists for illegal experimentation by the next week and by the end of the month she will be forced to act as a suicide bomber right in front of Buckingham Palace, killing hundreds. So accept the bloody quest.**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry stared at the failure screen, horrified. How…how could there be people like that…? Something inside him curled. Something deep… something forgotten…

 _Mutilate them…murder them…kill them…they deserve it…_

Harry's scar burned, Gamer's Mind snapped, and a hot rage the likes of which he had never felt filled Harry.

With nary a thought, he opened up his inventory and pulled out his wolf cloak. He'd discovered in his spare time that it had various magical properties, like disguising him by using illusions and changing his voice. It seemed like oddly fitting to use the memento of his own greatest regret to do some good. Obscuring his face in the shadows of the hood of the jacket, he got ready to break in. This was going to be a bloodbath.

Zipping up the front of the jacket, Harry stepped off the edge of the roof, falling all the way down the 150-foot tall building and landing with a thump straight onto the lone guard guarding the door, shattering dozens of his bones and knocking him out on impact. He then rose to his feet and opened the door quietly, slipping through.

Inside he found several guards walking around with guns in tow. Slipping into the shadows, he tried to stay out of sight as he evaluated the threat in front of him. The girl was on the fifth floor, and there was four floors chock full of armed men against him. This wasn't going to be easy, but he wasn't going to be holding back. With a combination of Apparition and Sneaking, he made headway through the hallways, but with his Sneak being a relatively low level, he was bound to get caught eventually.

Luckily for him, it was a random guard.

"Who are you?" the man asked, threateningly shaking his gun at him.

"Nobody of consequence."

"Well, then nobody better disappear fast," he snapped, fingering the trigger of his sub-machine gun, "or else."

Harry opened his inventory box in front of him and expanded it to cover his entire body like a wall.

"Fine then. Make my day," he said with a grin and pulled the trigger. The sub-machine gun went off, spraying bullets at Harry, only for each bullet to enter Harry's inventory and disappear. The man stopped shooting and looked at Harry with wide eyes.

"Wha…what are you?"

"As I said," Harry repeated as a needle-thin spike of earth shot out from behind the man, puncturing the man's spine, causing him to fall down paralyzed. "Nobody of concern."

Harry looked at the gun the man dropped and used Observe.

 **PP-2000**

 **A machine gun made by the KGB weapons division. It is a 9mm round and is capable of using armour piercing rounds while being capable of storing 44 rounds. It was previously used by Russia but is also common in the hands of the russian mafia.**

 **Bullets left- 23**

Harry put the gun away. He was sure he could find some use in it in the future. He then checked the man's pockets and scored another cartridge of bullets and a cigarette lighter. Moving quick as a snake, he dumped the body in the shadows and then moved quick as a snake. As he approached a turn, another man appeared. The new grunt didn't even have time to respond as Harry knocked the man out with a punch and looted his body.

Dashing up the stairs into the first floor, Harry then climbed up onto the second floor and began knocking out every man patrolling the place. A punch to the gut, a chop to the neck, a slam to the chest… his fist being boosted by using fire shooting out of his elbow was a weapon good enough to take out even the beefiest of men. It took him fifteen minutes to clear the floor of the henchmen, which was a great speed, but he wasn't here to set a score. He was here to save that girl and time was running out the more he dawdled.

Finally deciding to abandon his minimum magic plan, Harry let his instincts take control.

Running up the stairs to the next level, he started apparating around like mad, letting loose pillars of fire and powerful jet streams of wind down hallways, taking down enemies by the dozens.

'They will hear the screams!' a part of his mind that he could barely hear through his bloodlust said.

 _Let them…let them know that death is coming…let them cower…_

Harry paid neither of the voices any heed. Halfway through, something in him had snapped. There was little reason left behind his rage. He had tasted blood, and he was in no mood to stop. It wasn't long before the next floor was clear of enemies too. His mind was thrumming with rage as he walked up the stairs to the level where they held the girl. Magic shivered at his fingertips, begging to be commanded into form.

 _Kill them all…_

It was as if his rage was a living demon inside him, telling him to do it! Something inside him tried to resist, but it wasn't nearly strong enough.

As the four men on the level came into sight, Harry locked eyes with each one of them, feeding on the fear and confusion that filled them, before focusing his mana around the four men on the level and clenching. Not the air around them, but on the water in their blood, freezing them right where they stood. Harry's scar flared with tremendous pain.

 _Kill_

Harry obeyed.

The blood in their vein froze. Deprived of oxygen and frozen in place, they desperately struggled to breathe. Their skin slowly paled, and their bodily functions shut down one by one. Grunnings was the first to go and then went the guards. Filled with a morbid sense of curiosity, Harry Observed the remaining man.

 **James Wesley**

 **Lv-25**

 **HP-8400/8400**

 **Race-Muggle**

 **Str-18**

 **Vit-17**

 **Dex-23**

 **Int-23**

 **Wis-17**

 **Luc-17**

 **The face of a criminal empire. The man behind numerous political assassinations all around the world. Considers himself loyal to his employer and a professional person. He is one of the best-known criminals in the American criminal underworld. Is a master marksman and really good at chess.**

Just as Harry had finished reading, the window faded away and Wesley dropped to the floor, gone for good.

Ping!

 **Skill has been evolved due to creative use!**

 **Wandless Magic Lv- 9(11%)**

 **Allows you to control your magic in short sporadic bursts. You can try to use it in any way you wish and it will obey your every command. Has various discoverable branches.**

 **Cost-20 MP per minute**

 **Branch A -Remomancy-Allows you to control any form of elements. You can reconstruct it in any way you wish and it will obey your every command.**

 **Cost-80 MP per minute**

Ping!

 **Quest Completed!**

 **Destroy the goons, help the girl escape!**

 **Reward,**

 **3000 Exp**

Ping!

 **You have leveled up!**

 **Harry Potter**

 **Health-450/450**

 **Mana-250/250**

 **The Gamer**

 **Title-The Boy who Lived**

 **(+20 Str,+20 Vit, +20 Dex, while in Home Turf)**

 **Level-9 Exp-19940/38400**

 **Race-wizard**

 **STR-12**

 **VIT-10(+3)=13**

 **DEX-9(+3)=12**

 **INT-14**

 **WIS-10**

 **LUC-19**

 **POINTS-15**

 **MONEY- 175£ / 2042G 182S 25K**

 **Harry Potter is a wizard, the son of Lily Potter and James Potter. He has bad eyesight making it difficult for him to do well in class. His magic has gotten him trouble over the years in various schools. Strange things seem to happen around him. Harry finally aware of who he is and wishes to find meaning in his life. Harry loves his parents and hates the Dursleys.**

 **Status- wizard, giving Harry - +3 VIT, +3 DEX and the ability to control magic, talk to snakes, control his appearance and look cool.**

Perhaps it was the pings, or perhaps it was the fact that finally, the fighting was over, but the rage faded, and Gamer's Mind finally took hold again.

With wide eyes, Harry turned around to look at the carnage of dead and unconscious he'd left behind him.

"Oh no…" he muttered, "What have I done?"

But he didn't have much time to wallow in his misery. With a start, he remembered the girl and shook his head. No matter how carried away he'd been, he couldn't just stop here. He still had work to do. It was like John had said. He had the right to protect. Not just himself, but other innocents around him. He looked around for the girl, only to realize she'd fallen unconscious.

Immediately, Harry turned around and started looking through the loot around him, picking up anything that he found.

 **5 pump action shotguns**

 **4 AK47s**

 **3 sniper rifles**

 **17 mini surveillance bugs**

 **A pack of ammunition**

 **7 impact grenades**

 **Money- 1650£**

Harry piled up the four people he had killed, and putting a hand on the pile, transported it all to an ID and then used ID escape to get out of the ID. Since the ID reset every time he went into it, the bodies would be gone the next time he entered it. Finished with his work, Harry picked up the girl and prepared to apparate away, but stopped when he heard a thud behind him.

He turned around to see a man behind him, wearing all black with a black piece of cloth covering his eyes and the upper half of his head.

"Who are you? I've been following that man for a long time now. What did you do to him?" the man spoke warily, easing into a fighting stance.

Harry frowned. He had no interest in fighting more. He had done enough of that while he had been berserk with rage. Besides, the man was no danger to him.

Ping!

 **A new skill has just been created!**

 **Bloodlust, Lv-4**

 **You scare the crap out of your enemies.**

 **25% chance of working**

 **20% scary**

With his wolf cloak hiding his identity in any and all ways, giving his voice the undertone of a growling werewolf, Harry's voice was already fairly intimidating. Combined with Bloodlust, it was downright terrifying.

 **"No one you'd like to mess with"** Harry said, and turning on the spot, apparated away.

* * *

"Well, there you are, boy," Uncle Vernon said, a nasty grin on his face. "Platform nine and platform ten. Your platform should be somewhere in the middle, but they don't seem to have built it yet, do they? "

Figuring he was reasonably safe saying anything he wanted to him seeing as how he wouldn't see the man and his blob of a son ever again, Harry rolled his eyes.

"You, Uncle, elevate the meaning of the word moronic to a whole new level every single time you open your mouth, you know that?" Harry said, while flippantly looking around in search of any other Muggleborn or magical family taking a kid to the station.

McGonagall had told him to run straight at the divide between Platforms 9 and 10, but without any knowledge as to which side of the divide was he to run at, Harry wasn't about to risk looking like an idiot in the middle of one of the most crowded stations in the world. Although he did rather like the clever sense of making sure that only a running person could enter the barrier which made sure no one leaning on it would fall into the station.

"Of course they don't have the platform be obvious," Harry added, "It's magic. You do remember the word don't you Uncle? That five lettered word. Spelled M-A-G-I-C. Don't you?" Harry was having way too much fun riling Vernon up. He was turning purple and the passerby people were staring at him. For a moment, he amusedly wondered how much he should charge them for a session with an extremely rare purple whale.

 **Ping!**

 **A new skill has been made through your act of taunting,**

 **Taunt, Lv-1 (50%)**

 **You can cause your opponent to lose their cool and do something stupid.**

 **5% chance of working**

"Then where is it, boy?" Vernon spat angrily.

"You just walk right through the portal."

"How?"

"Magic!" Harry replied with a grin as Vernon turned even purpler. This was way too much fun. "In fact, you can come with me, if you like, and see it for yourself. All you have to do is sacrifice an appendage of your own," Harry suggested, smirking as Vernon turned purple to pale, thinking of the appendage dearest to him.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Harry saw a couple with two teenagers go straight through the Platform 9 face of the wall. With a curt goodbye, he quickly left Vernon behind and headed towards the barrier.

"-packed with Muggles, of course-"

Harry looked up abruptly as he heard the wizarding term for non-magicals. Looking around, he caught sight of a family of redheads from where the voice had come and quickly hurried after them.

"Now, what's the platform number?" The old woman asked playfully.

"Nine and three-quarters!" the little girl piped up, "Mum, can't I go, Harry Potter will be there this year!"

Harry couldn't help but grin at that. He had a fan! Gingerly, he approached them.

"Excuse me," Harry said.

"Hello, dear," the woman said kindly, "First time at Hogwarts?

Harry nodded.

"Oh good. Ron's new, too," she exclaimed, reaching behind her to drag one of the smaller ones out of the pack of redheads, before patting him on the back, "Well? Aren't you going to say hello to your classmate, Ron?"

"I- er- yes mum," the freckled boy said before sticking his hand out at Harry with a nervous grin, "Hello. I'm Ron."

Harry smiled gingerly. There was going to be a reaction. Shaking Ron's hand, he said, "Hi Ron, my name is Harry Potter."

As he had anticipated, the reaction was immediate. Ron's eyes immediately flew to his forehead and the little girl let out an abrupt squeal and promptly hid behind her mother's skirt, peeking out shyly at Harry.

It was rather adorable, Harry decided, even if the whole getting recognized thing was a bit uncomfortable.

"Are you really?" Ron asked.

"Are you really Ron?" Harry replied amusedly.

"Of course I am," Ron said, looking confused. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"I could say the same to you," Harry replied and turned to the woman. "So, I was wondering if you could help me get onto the platform ma'am?" he asked.

She nodded. "Of course, dear. All you have to do is walk straight at the barrier between platforms nine and ten. Don't stop and don't be scared you'll crash into it, that's very important. Best do it at a bit of a run if you're nervous. Go on, go now before Ron."

Harry thanked her for her help and steeling himself, ran full tilt at the wall.

The imposingly solid brick drew closer…closer…closer…and then it felt like he was walking through a veil of mist, and then he was somewhere else.

Harry looked around, smiling a little at the sight of so many wizards that had dressed up, obviously in an attempt to fit in with the muggles in the station outside, but had failed spectacularly. A woman with a dead vulture arranged on her hat walked past him, and Harry almost broke out into a fit of giggles.

A dozen different things were assaulting his senses, and it felt amazing.

"Thank you for your help ma'am," Harry said to the redheaded woman and went down the station. He had most of his stuff in his inventory, but he'd stuffed a few of his school books and some odd knick-knacks into his trunk just to blend in a bit. So he quickly found a compartment, and sliding the door close, picked a spot by the window to sit, listening to the chatter of the redhead family by the train for a few minutes before tuning them out and turning to his copy of _The Two Towers._

Ever since Harry had learned that Tolkien was a wizard, he'd been reading his books whenever he had free time, which he had a lot of, since he basically absorbed all the information in the all the reference books he had, some of which taught up to and beyond third-year stuff. Harry doubted that he'd ever even need to look at the books again, but even so, the school books each had their own way of describing the concepts and he had fun reading them.

After a few minutes, the door to the compartment slid open, and two remarkably similar-looking redheads; no doubt part of the family he'd met earlier; stepped in.

"Blimey, we found 'im!" said one of them, "Are you-?"

"He is," the other confirmed. Harry had overheard their names, Fred and George, but he couldn't tell which one was Fred and which one was George.

"Aren't you?"

"I'm confused, if that's what you mean," Harry finally replied.

"Harry Potter?" chorused the twins.

Harry nodded, and a grin spread across the two boys' faces.

"Welcome back mate. Hope the time with the muggles didn't scare the magic out of you."

Harry paused a moment, before remembering that everything in his life was public knowledge at this point. Deciding to just roll with it, he chuckled and replied, "I'm definitely hoping not. First class with Professor McGonagall is gonna be really awkward if that's happened."

The twins seemed pleased. "Will you look at that Gred?" one said, and the other continued, "Looks like our savior isn't as airheaded as we were worried he was eh?"

And then the first one picked back up again, "So, any expectations for the house you want to be in Mr. Potter?"

"My parents were in Gryffindor, so I suppose I could go there, but I'd probably do fine in Ravenclaw as well," Harry replied, casting Observe. The results almost made him choke on thin air.

 **Fred & George Weasley**

 **Lv-7**

 **HP-1320/1320**

 **MP-900/900**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-8**

 **Vit-12**

 **Dex-13**

 **Int-14**

 **Wis-7**

 **Luc-12**

 **Born as conjoined twins and separated at birth by a magical surgery, Fred and George Weasley are consummate pranksters and lifelong purveyors of mischief. They have the ability to subconsciously communicate with each other using their thoughts as long as they are within a certain range of each other. They occasionally work with their friend Lee Jordan and study in their third year at Hogwarts. Their dream is to open a joke shop.**

 **They think Harry is a nice guy and hope that he isn't some stuck up celebrity who judges people by how much money they have.**

Harry didn't stare, but he couldn't help but wonder with incredulity at the fact that these guys could communicate with each other in their heads! Curious to see what other special secrets they were hiding, Harry started casting observe on them, hoping for more information while engaging in light banter with them.

Suddenly catching sight of a yellowing piece of parchment sticking out of George's pocket, he observed it as well.

 **The Marauder's Map**

 **The Marauder's Map is a magical document that reveals all of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Not only does it show every classroom, every hallway, and every corner of the castle, but it also shows every inch of the grounds, as well as all the secret passages that are hidden within its walls and the location of every person in the grounds, portrayed by a dot. It is also capable of accurately identifying each person, and is not fooled by animagi, polyjuice potions, or invisibility cloaks; even the Hogwarts ghosts are not exempt from this.**

This time, he did stop and stare.

"You alright mate?" George asked, concerned about their new friend.

"Yeah, yeah. Just fine." Harry said, waving away both the screens and their concerns. Just then, their younger brother entered the compartment.

"Fred, George, is anyone sitting there?" he asked, pointing at the seat opposite Harry. "Everywhere else is full."

"I guess that's it for us Harry," said George, "Take the seat Ron. We've got to get back to Lee. We will see you two later, then.

Harry wondered if he should steal the map from them, but ultimately decided not to. He wanted to try and explore the castle on his own. And if an emergency called for it, he could always ask.

"Bye," said Ron. The twins slid the compartment door shut behind them.

"Are you really Harry Potter?" Ron blurted out.

Harry nodded.

"Oh -well, I thought it might've been one of Fred and George's jokes," said Ron. "And have you really got - you know..."

He pointed at Harry's forehead.

Harry sighed. It looked like Ron was a little clueless. Asking him to show his only scar from the night his parents died was a bit too daft, but figuring that Ron was probably too engrossed in his idea of meeting a hero that he forgot his manners, Harry pulled back his bangs to show the lightning scar. Ron stared.

"Wicked," he said.

"Yeah, it was really considerate of Voldemort to give me such a wicked-looking scar when he murdered my family and attempted to kill me as an infant," Harry said dryly, hoping he would catch on and they could move on from the subject.

But Ron just stared at him, fascinated and a little horrified. "You really shouldn't say his name, you know."

Harry raised an eyebrow. That was what he got from it? That he had said the name of a dead wizard? Not Harry's not-so-subtle ribbing on his tactlessness?

"I know," Harry finally replied, remembering the first time he'd said the name and felt its power. For a dead wizard, his name sure seemed to hold some serious magical weight. Ron, on the other hand, looked torn between the desire to impress upon Harry the importance of not saying Tom Riddle's pseudonym and asking more about the night the two had met for the first time.

Finally, he asked, "Do you remember it?"

"You do realize I was fifteen-months-old, right Ron?" Harry asked, raising an eyebrow.

"I know!" Ron defended, although his tone of voice indicated that he didn't seem to really grasp that Harry was far too young to have even properly remembered the event, much less actually play some part in Voldemort's downfall. "I just thought that you might remember because of the scar."

Now it was Harry's turn to stare. "You know, I'm starting to think that you don't actually know much about how scars work mate. And to answer your question, yes, a little."

"What do you remember?" Ron asked eagerly.

Harry paused, before frowning.

What _did_ he remember? He'd seen bits and pieces from his nightmare, but he had never really tried to put it all together before. Putting aside the fact that he should be offended that Ron was actually asking questions about what he remembered about the first time someone attempted to kill him, now seemed to be as good a time as any, considering he had a few hours to kill.

"Well," Harry said, closing his eyes and trying to piece together all the flashes he'd seen over the years. The visions effortlessly floated to the front of his mind, "I remember someone…my father…telling my mother to take me and leave. Then there's laughing… and someone else…my mother…begging the Dark Lord to spare my life. He told her to stand aside and let him kill me…but she didn't…she said no and asked him to kill her instead. He-he did, and then there was a lot of green light and my forehead felt like it was on fire…"

Harry's chest coiled more and more, and by the time he had finished and opened his eyes, there were tears flowing down his face.

Ron looked horrified. "I'm sorry, mate, I didn't think-"

"No. No, you didn't," Harry cut him off flatly, wiping off his tears as he got to his feet. "Well, it was…a pleasure meeting you Ron. I suppose I'll see you around at Hogwarts," He said in the same flat tone, and opening the compartment door, walked out.

Feeling confused, frustrated, and rather unbearably sad for some reason, Harry did the only thing some his age would have done when faced with such turbulent emotions.

He blamed it on someone else. More specifically, Ron.

'Well, now I know what house I don't want to be in. The one into which he goes,' Harry thought angrily as he went up the train looking for another compartment to sit one with only a boy and a bushy haired girl, he slid open the door.

"Excuse me. Can I sit in here?"

Getting a nod from the girl and the rather timid boy, Harry sat himself down beside the boy and joined in on the conversation.

"But how does that make sense!"

"It's just the way it is," Neville replied to Hermione's indignation with a shrug.

"So what're you talking about?" Harry asked.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, with an innumerable number of facts about Quidditch stuck into his brain, Harry stood firmly on Hermione's side of the argument while Neville looked devastated at having lost another one to the anti-Quidditch campaign.

"She's right Neville. One hundred and fifty points for someone to catch a golden ball! That makes absolutely no sense!" Harry said with a shrug. He could definitely get the appeal of flying really fast, but the rules of this game were abhorrent. It was as if they took football and then went ham with it.

"You-you haven't ever seen a professional match! The chasers score fast-really fast really early and catching a snitch before an hour is extremely hard. It just adds that much more unpredictability to the game, you never really know who's going to win." Neville apparently personally abhorred flying, but much like other children of his age born into wizarding families, was incredibly passionate about Quidditch and willing do anything to defend his favorite sport.

"They won't change the game just 'cause you say so!" Neville exclaimed.

"I am the Boy-Who-Lived, you know, People will listen to me. And maybe if I can persuade them to change the game at Hogwarts, the innovation will spread." The compartment grew silent at the statement. Harry suddenly remembered that he hadn't really given them his last name.

'Oh dear.'

"Are you really?" said Hermione, her voice transforming, "I know all about you, of course I got a few extra books for background reading, and you're in Modern Magical History and The Rise and Fall of the Dark Arts and Great Wizarding Events of the Twentieth Century."

"Did you?" said Harry, immediately putting a stop to her tirade. He had messed up his friendship with the first person his age he'd met because he let this kind of conversation go on for too long. He'd be damned if he made the same mistake again.

"If you did you'd also know that the only person to survive that night was me and I have never been interviewed by anybody, nor have I even tested for anything as far as I know. So, most likely, most of what you read, especially about me killing a dragon and discovering Atlantis, is a lie."

"But they're books! They wouldn't lie in them!" Hermione raised her voice indignantly.

"Wouldn't they? It was the time right after a war, Hermione," Harry said grimly, "Families were dead and children were orphaned. So these stories and so-called facts would have been printed to give hope to a broken and bleeding society. That was the truth then, and that is the truth today. It is also the only reason I've allowed them to stay on shelves and not taken their publishers to court for breaking the law. Even a lie spoken with best intentions doesn't make it the truth."

 **Due to reaching a logical conclusion and spreading it around, you've gained 1 Wis!**

 **WIS-13**

Hermione was staggered to a standstill. Harry reminded himself that even if they were both the same age, they had very separate upbringings and she had no Gamer's Mind to help her be objective and assess situations like Harry did. Her worldview was based on books and elders always being right. Harry had just broken one of the legs of the stool that her entire worldview stood on.

After a few silent moments, Hermione finally spoke again. "You two had better change, I expect we'll be there soon," she stood, still in shock and off balance, and walked out of the compartment, presumably to the bathroom to change.

Harry and Neville took off their jackets and pulled on their long black robes.

"You-you really scared her I think." Neville's voice had gained back his stutter after the topic of Quidditch had passed. Before Harry could answer, the compartment door slid open and three boys stepped in.

"Is it true?" he said. "They're saying all down the train that Harry Potter's in this compartment. So it's you, is it?"

"Indeed it is," said Harry. He was looking at the other boys. Both of them were thickset and looked extremely mean. Standing on either side of the pale boy, they looked like bodyguards. Harry quickly observed them.

 **Gregory Goyle**

 **Lv-3**

 **HP-220/220**

 **MP-100/100**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-8**

 **Vit-3**

 **Dex-3**

 **Int-2**

 **Wis-1**

 **Luc-4**

 **Goyle, along with fellow Slytherin Crabbe, is best friends with Draco Malfoy. They often follow Malfoy around and do his bidding. He has the IQ of a half-dead goldfish and can be accurately described as one of the reasons to avoid inbreeding.**

 **Vincent Crabbe**

 **Lv-3**

 **HP-220/220**

 **MP-100/100**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-8**

 **Vit-3**

 **Dex-3**

 **Int-2**

 **Wis-1**

 **Luc-4**

 **Crabbe, along with fellow Slytherin Goyle, is best friends with Draco Malfoy. They often follow Malfoy around and do his bidding. He has the IQ of a half-dead goldfish and can be accurately described as one of the reasons to avoid inbreeding.**

 **Draco Malfoy**

 **Lv-4**

 **HP-320/320**

 **MP-140/140**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-5**

 **Vit-4**

 **Dex-4**

 **Int-6**

 **Wis-3**

 **Luc-3**

 **Draco Malfoy is a pure-blood wizard and the only heir of the Malfoy family. The son of a Death Eater, Draco was raised to believe strongly in the importance of blood purity. He wishes to be sorted into Slytherin house. Despite his father's violent torturous teaching sessions about blood purity and 'old times' Draco looks up to him and admires him.**

 **He thinks that Harry is a great Dark wizard for killing the Dark Lord who will be to him what Lord Voldemort was to his father. He really wants to get on his good side.**

Harry sighed.

It only made sense. He had fangirls and an unexpected and convoluted celebrity backstory. He didn't honestly know why he was surprised by conspiracy theorists.

"This is Crabbe and this is Goyle," said the pale boy carelessly, mistaking Harry's stare at his game windows for him asking who his henchmen were, "And my name's Draco Malfoy of House Malfoy."

He turned to Neville. "Heir _Longbottom_ , glad to see you made it onto the train alright." While his words were nothing but polite, his voice held a sort of demeaning contempt that made Harry's spine tingle.

"Heir Malfoy, I suspect you came here because you wished to form an alliance with House Potter. I assure you that it will not happen unless you're entirely civil to Heir Longbottom here, who already has my friendship." Harry had read enough fantasy novels and etiquette books to know exactly what to say and in which tone to say it. And apparently, he was somehow successful, because Malfoy nodded to his bodyguards and they left the compartment.

"My apologies Heir Potter." He said. Harry simply nodded, not trusting his fantasy book knowledge to take him too far, and waved him to the seat in front him. Draco sat down.

Draco looked around, before spotting the books, "I see you've been reading ahead."

"A little," Harry admitted with a shrug.

"My father had me begin reading a few months ago. He wouldn't let me cast anything, but he showed me a few spells with his wand," Draco bragged.

"How much have you read?" Harry asked, curious.

"Oh, just a few chapters into each book," he answered, trying to sound nonchalant but failing. He was quite proud of his accomplishment and was enjoying the chance to brag in front of the Boy-Who-Lived. "You?"

"I started reading when I got back from Diagon Alley. I've spent most of my free time reading, and besides, it's really interesting to match all the accidental magic with the stuff in the books." Harry replied, not wanting to reveal too much. He could probably go off into his 3rd-year theory exams right now if he wanted, but he didn't want to draw too much attention.

Ping!

 **A new skill was created due to your ass being jealous of the crap that flows through your mouth!**

 **Bullshitting, Lv-2**

 **A combination of lying and the truth said in a very confident manner!**

"Really? Aiming for Ravenclaw are you?" Draco said, a bit surprised.

Harry shrugged. "They do have the resources to gain the most knowledge, and knowledge is an essential tenement of survival in any society," Harry said, trying to recall some of the big words from that Thesaurus he'd been glancing at a while back.

"You don't want to lead or fight battles or…you know…all that stuff?" Draco asked tentatively.

Harry rolled his eyes, "Please do try not to imply that I'm some sort of savior that has come to lead the Wizarding World. I'm just a first year who wants to learn magic, like you."

Impressed, Draco smiled. "You're not what I had expected, Heir Potter. Even if you happen to not get into Slytherin…don't be a stranger."

"I can agree to that." Harry shook Draco's hand, who then got up and left, goons in tow. Harry looked at Draco's description as he left, frowning at the line about his father. His father was a Death Eater who was physically abusing his son. And even after that, the son showed no distaste towards his father. Harry frowned. There was something fishy up there.

A voice echoed through the train: "We will be reaching Hogwarts in five minutes' time. Please leave your luggage on the train, it will be taken to the school separately."

Harry's stomach lurched with nerves and Neville was positively shivering, looking very pale. Together, they quickly joined the crowd thronging the corridor. The train slowed right down and finally stopped. People pushed their way toward the door and out on to a tiny, dark platform. Harry shivered in the cold night air.

Then, a lamp came bobbing over the heads of the students, and Harry heard a voice: "Firs' years! Firs' years over here!" A positively huge man's hairy face beamed over the sea of heads. 'Hagrid,' Harry thought, matching the description with the name Professor McGonagall had given to him.

"C'mon, follow me-any more firs' years? Mind yer step, now! Firs' years follow me!"

Slipping and stumbling, they followed Hagrid down what seemed to be a steep, narrow path. It was so dark on either side of them that Harry thought there must've been thick trees there. Nobody spoke much. Neville only sniffed once or twice.

"Ye' all get yer firs' sight o' Hogwarts in a sec," Hagrid called over his shoulder, "jus' round this bend here."

There was a loud "Oooooh!" from the kids ahead of him.

The narrow path had opened suddenly onto the edge of a great black take. Perched atop a high mountain on the other side, its windows sparkling in the starry sky, was a vast castle with many turrets and towers.

But that wasn't what Harry was staring at. He was staring at the new red window that had popped up in front of him the second he lay eyes on the castle.

 **WARNING!**

 **You have decided to enter the ancient wards of Hogwarts. Should you choose to do so, your Wardstone perk will be deactivated due to being inside a more powerful set of wards. You will be unable to use them unless you get yourself out of its wards.**

 **YES/NO**

Deciding that he was already too far gone to turn back, Harry pressed yes forged on ahead. He used Observe on the castle.

 **Hogwarts Castle**

 **Hogwarts Castle is a large, seven-story high building supported by magic, with a hundred and forty-two staircases throughout its many towers and turrets and very deep dungeons. The castle was built in the late Early Middle Ages. Hogwarts is built in a valley area with the fairly large Great Lake to the south of the main building. The deep Forbidden Forest extends around to the west of the Castle. Due to its extremely advanced age and the sheer amount of magic present in or around it, the castle is implied to have developed some form of sentience or awareness.**

"No more'n four to a boat!" Hagrid called, distracting Harry from his observe box. He was pointing to a fleet of little boats sitting in the water by the shore. Harry was followed into his boat by Neville, a boy named Terry Boot and a red-haired girl with pigtails. Hermione notably avoided them and went into another boat. "Everyone in?" shouted Hagrid, who had a boat to himself. "Right then - FORWARD!"

And the fleet of little boats moved off all at once, gliding across the lake, which was as smooth as glass. Everyone was silent, staring up at the great castle overhead. It towered over them as they sailed nearer and nearer to the cliff on which it stood.

"Heads down!" yelled Hagrid as the first boats reached the cliff and Harry shared an amused smile with Draco Malfoy when everyone else all bent their heads; the cliff was way too high to be a danger to anyone except the massive man leading them. The boats carried them through a curtain of ivy that hid a wide opening in the cliff face. They were carried through a dark tunnel, which seemed to be taking them right underneath the castle, until they reached a kind of underground harbor, where they clambered out onto rocks and pebbles. Then they clambered up a passageway in the rock after Hagrid's lamp, coming out at last onto smooth, damp grass right in the shadow of the castle.

They walked up a flight of stone steps and crowded around the huge, oak front door. Hagrid raised a gigantic fist and knocked three times on the castle door.

* * *

They were fetched by McGonagall to what Harry suspected was the entrance hall to the Great Hall that he had read about in Hogwarts a History.

He shivered at the thought of the book. Apparently, some parts of it were magically hidden from the sights of underage children, hiding away the more sexually explicit happenings that'd happened in the halls of the castle. Harry, of course, had broken through it with Gamer's mind and Runic Burnout and had promptly sworn off the book forever.

And then there were ghosts. Full on, silvery, intangible, ghosts. One, Harry noticed with some disgust, even had blood patches and chains. Harry wondered why they weren't mentioned in the Hogwarts a History book. Perhaps the writers were having a laugh at the expense of the startled muggle-raised students every year. Either way, they had managed to make their way onto Harry's shitlist.

"We're ready for you now." McGonagall's clipped voice cut through Harry's inner rants.

Feeling oddly as though his legs had turned to lead, Harry got into line behind a boy with sandy hair with Ron standing behind him, and they walked out of the chamber, back across the hall, and through a pair of double doors into the fabled Great Hall.

It did not disappoint.

Not even in the wildest corners of his overactive imagination had Harry even imagined such a place. Lit by thousands and thousands of candles that were floating midair over four long tables, where the rest of the students were sitting. Briefly wondering how the wax didn't fall into the food, Harry looked at the tables that were laid with glittering golden plates and goblets. At the top of the hall was another long table perpendicular to the House tables where the teachers were sitting. Professor McGonagall led the first years up here so that they came to a halt in a line facing the other students, with the teachers behind them. The hundreds of faces staring at them looked like pale lanterns in the flickering candlelight. Dotted here and there among the students, the ghosts shone misty silver.

Mainly to avoid all the staring eyes, Harry looked upward and saw a velvety black enchanted ceiling dotted with stars. It was hard to believe there was a ceiling there at all, and that the Great Hall didn't simply open up into the heavens.

Harry quickly looked down again as Professor McGonagall placed a four-legged stool in front of the first years. On top of the stool she put a pointed wizard's hat that was patched and frayed and extremely dirty. Maybe they had to try and get a rabbit out of it, Harry thought wildly as he wondered what the Sorting test was.

For a few seconds, there was complete silence. Then the hat twitched. A rip near the brim opened wide like a mouth-and the hat began to sing:

 _"Oh, you may not think I'm pretty,_

 _But don't judge on what you see,_

 _I'll eat myself if you can find_

 _A smarter hat than me._

 _You can keep your bowlers black,_

 _Your top hats sleek and tall,_

 _For I'm the Hogwarts Sorting Hat_

 _And I can cap them all._

 _There's nothing hidden in your head_

 _The Sorting Hat can't see,_

 _So try me on and I will tell you_

 _Where you ought to be._

 _You might belong in Gryffindor,_

 _Where dwell the brave at heart,_

 _Their daring, nerve, and chivalry Set Gryffindors apart;_

 _You might belong in Hufflepuff,_

 _Where they are just and loyal,_

 _Those patient Hufflepuffs are true And unafraid of toil;_

 _Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw,_

 _if you have a ready mind,_

 _Where those of wit and learning,_

 _Will always find their kind;_

 _Or perhaps in Slytherin_

 _You'll make your real friends,_

 _Those cunning folk use any means_

 _To achieve their ends._

 _So put me on! Don't be afraid!_

 _And don't get in a flap!_

 _You're in safe hands (though I have none)_

 _For I'm a Thinking Cap!"_

The whole hall burst into applause as the hat finished its song. It bowed to each of the four tables and then became quite still again. 'Observe,' Harry instantly thought.

 **The Sorting Hat**

 **This magical hat enchanted with the intelligence of all four founders of Hogwarts. It normally stays in the Headmaster's office until it is needed. During the opening banquet at the beginning of each school year, it speaks to the wearer inside of the hat with a small, quiet voice, using Legilimency to interpret their thoughts and respond to them. After a moment of consideration, the hat announces its choice aloud for all to hear, and the student joins the selected house. The moment of consideration varies in length, from over five minutes to less than a second.**

So that's what it was. The four Founders…Harry almost drooled at the thought of the amount of knowledge that the hat held. Ten minutes with it would probably boost his own intelligence by a metric ton.

Professor McGonagall now stepped forward holding a long roll of parchment.

"When I call your name, you will put on the hat and sit on the stool to be sorted," she said. "Abbott, Hannah!"

A pink-faced girl with blonde pigtails stumbled out of line, put on the hat, which fell right down over her eyes, and sat down. A moment's pause -

"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouted the hat.

The table on the right cheered and clapped as Hannah went to sit down at the Hufflepuff table. Harry saw the ghost of the Fat Friar waving merrily at her.

"Bones, Susan!"

"HUFFLEPUFF!" shouted the hat again, and Susan scuttled off to sit next to Hannah.

"Boot, Terry!"

"RAVENCLAW!"

And so it went. Sometimes, Harry noticed, the hat shouted out the house at once, but at other times it took a little while to decide. 'Finnigan, Seamus,' the sandy-haired boy who had stood next to Harry sat on the stool for almost a whole minute before the hat declared him a Gryffindor.

"Granger, Hermione!"

Hermione almost ran to the stool and jammed the hat on her head. Harry winced in sympathy for the hat when he saw a new tear appear on the brim.

"RAVENCLAW!" shouted the hat.

When Neville was called, he fell over on his way to the stool. The hat took a long time to decide with him. When it finally shouted, "GRYFFINDOR," Neville ran off still wearing it, and had to jog back amid gales of laughter to hand it over to "MacDougal, Morag."

Malfoy swaggered forward when his name was called and got his wish at once; the hat had barely touched his head when it screamed, "SLYTHERIN!"

Malfoy went to join his friends Crabbe and Goyle, looking quite pleased with himself. Harry still was a bit disturbed by the boy's description, but he hoped he could find out more as the school year went along.

There weren't many people left now. "Moon" "Nott" "Parkinson" then a pair of twin girls, "Patil" and "Patil" then "Perks, Sally-Anne" and then, at last - "Potter, Harry!"

As Harry stepped forward, whispers suddenly broke out like a pit full of snakes all over the hall.

"Potter, did she say?"

" _The_ Harry Potter?"

The last thing Harry saw before the hat dropped over his head was the hall full of people craning to get a good look at him. Next second, the hall in front of him disappeared as he landed with a thud on what was looking like an entirely white surface. From in front of him, a dry voice spoke.

"Well. This is unexpected."

* * *

 **Yeet for this officially being the first 10000-word chapter of the story.**

 **I highlighted another one of Harry's flaws with Ron and emphasized on the Gamer's Mind faltering when Harry reaches for some very specific feelings and memories. You just witnessed the first time the Horcrux lodged in Harry's soul managed to influence Harry in a significant manner, infiltrating his very soul instead of his mind. That's gonna be elaborated on later. This chapter took longer than expected, mostly because this chapter had to be heavily changed and edited without changing any major story beats. It had a LOT of plot setups, but the whole feel of it was a bit off. Had to work a lot to put it all together more convincingly.**

 **There was, of course, some off-screen grinding. The stats were a bit higher because of that.**


	8. Book-I:Familiar Times

Chapter 7:

Harry Potter knew he wasn't good at a lot of things. He wasn't any good at cooking, despite his aunt's unending attempts at forcing him to be so. His steaks were so chewy they could have been mistaken for a Star Wars character and he had once put enough ginger into a macaroni to turn it into a Weasley. He also knew that he was rubbish at writing, mostly due to his terrible handwriting and his god awful glasses. But one thing Harry knew for sure that he was quite good at was keeping his cool when he was thrown into random as all heavens situations.

So when he was somehow transported out of the Great Hall and into a massive white room with four _very_ dead people in it, Harry stayed firm and didn't panic.

There was no shrill screaming or tossing fireballs in the general direction of those people…none at all.

"What the bloody hell am I doing in this place?" Harry asked after he had finally calmed down and taken a seat in one of the all-white chairs in the room. The chairs mirrored nearly everything in the room. White walls, white furnishing, white chandelier, white table, white everything.

Even the four people sitting in front of him were white.

"Language!" The plump lady in yellow said.

Harry flatly stared at the woman, before ignoring her remark. He'd had more than enough weird situations being thrown at him to warrant a few curse words. "Now please tell me what I am doing with…you all…I can't even believe this. The Founders! Didn't you all die a million and a half years ago?"

"A thousand," the man in green corrected him. "And how did you know who we are?"

Harry raised an eyebrow. "You are quite literally wearing red, yellow, green and blue, the House colors of Hogwarts, and I was transported here when I put on the sorting hat said to be imbued with the founder's intelligence. Not exactly a Sherlockian deduction to make…"

"I suppose not...not for a Ravenclaw at least," Rowena Ravenclaw, the lady in blue spoke with a smirk on her face before answering his question, "The Sorting hat uses Legilimency, more specifically Salazar's skill of Legilimency, to show us the to-be-sorted child's thoughts for us to assess and sort them into our houses. His skill at the arts is so great that most children don't even notice the probe. Yet for some reason…it just bounced off your consciousness, reflecting itself back and turning it on its own user."

Harry's eyes widened with shock, "Wait a minute, are you saying what I think you're saying?"

Godric Gryffindor nodded, "You're in the consciousness of the Sorting Hat. Its very mind, if you will imagine it so."

Harry quickly remembered what he was thinking about this magical artifact holding so much knowledge before one of his earlier thoughts flew back into his head.

"Bloody Hell! You guys have to teach me everything! There is so much I have to ask about magic. And Hogwarts! I mean, you're the founders!" he rambled nervously, hoping to all the heavens above that he hadn't alienated these people.

"Calm down child," Helga Hufflepuff stopped his ramblings, sharing an amused look with Ravenclaw, "I'm afraid we can't give you any knowledge, nor can we teach you our arts. The only reason our souls were allowed to return to this school was that we agreed to bind ourselves to the ancient rules of non-interference. We can't interact directly with any living person, nor can we influence the living in any way at all. You coming here is an… anomaly." She said before she turned and smirked at Salazar Slytherin, "Now why don't you tell us how you have such powerful shields on your minds. Salazar has been trying to break through them since you got here. I do think he'll pop a vein if he doesn't figure it out soon."

"No."

Slytherin raised an eye, "Excuse me?"

"I said no. I won't explain how I do it," Harry replied, getting more and more confident with every word, "I have read of the ancient laws you speak of. They are prominent features of Greek mythology. They mention a barter system. A give or take of sorts between those bound by the laws and those not. A reward system...So I will tell you what I'm doing, but in exchange I want you to give me a reward. Your knowledge."

They were all silenced for a bit, and then Gryffindor let out a full-bellied guffaw. "Looks like this one is headed for your house Salazar," He spoke between bouts of choking laughter.

Helga Hufflepuff spoke, ignoring the chortling bearded man beside him, "Yes. There is such a system Mr. Potter. And yes. We will grant you a reward for telling us how you blocked us. Now please, do reveal your secret."

And Harry, after extracting a promise of confidence, told them about his powers.

"Extraordinary" muttered Slytherin, stroking his goatee while Gryffindor had Harry describe all the mechanics of his video game. Hufflepuff almost had an aneurysm when he told them of the werewolf, and Ravenclaw only watched with glinting eyes.

"And that's it," Harry concluded and waited for the founders to fulfill their ends of the bargain. They looked at each other for a second, before leaning in together and discussing something in a hushed voice.

Soon, they turned to him as one. "Each of us has a haven inside Hogwarts." As one they spoke. "In each of those are our greatest achievements. Our greatest creations. Find them, and they will be your next clue. Your path will lead you to the unknowns we once traveled in our primes in each of our own quests for knowledge and power. But beware, Harry Potter, for the trials in those paths will test your very limits."

"Well, wasn't that cryptic," Harry muttered as his Gamer's Mind dissected their every word for clues, storing away into perfect memory everything from their tone to their facial expression while they spoke of the dangers.

"We've lost many great pupils to this path Mr. Potter, be careful, should you choose to follow it. It's not for the faint of heart," Hufflepuff spoke in a gentle voice.

Harry nodded and they all sat there in an awkward silence.

It was a minute before Harry spoke, breaking the ominous atmosphere in the room, "So…is this it? Do I go back to Hogwarts now?"

Gryffindor shook his head, "Not quite. We still have your sorting left. You certainly have the mind of a Slytherin. And then there is the Parseltongue."

Slytherin sighed, looking at Harry with calculating eyes, "While that may be true, my house will have him with many of his enemies' children. He will not be safe there. And thus it will not be the best place for him to grow into the man that must explore our pasts."

"I don't think my puffs can quite handle you, Mr. Potter. No offense of course," Hufflepuff said with a smile. Harry nodded and smiled back, deciding that he liked the kind woman.

"Well, I for one won't reject such a promising student. He would certainly do well in Gryffindor. However, I do believe that he'd do better with the over-obsessive book-heads he is so similar to. Plus he'll have privacy there to do his personal quests," Gryffindor said.

Ravenclaw didn't reply, but it was obvious that a conclusion had been arrived at. With a nod and a wave of his hand, Slytherin sent Harry and his chair flying back, where he slammed into the wall behind him surprisingly painlessly before promptly blacking out.

* * *

"RAVENCLAW!" The hat yelled as Harry came back into consciousness in the real world, hearing it shout out the last word to the whole hall.

With a smile, he took off the hat and started walking towards the Ravenclaw table when suddenly his legs almost buckled underneath him as a massive head splitting weight seemed to fall onto his shoulders. Pain like nothing he'd ever experienced ripped through his body, and he almost crumpled to the floor then and there.

'NO!' he thought. He couldn't draw attention to himself. Not now. Not after what had just happened.

Steeling himself, he fixed a nervous smile on his face and walked shakily toward the table. The Prefect, Clearwater, got up and shook his hand, jostling Harry and making him wince under the extreme pain he was under. Every muscle in his body was turning into fire. Harry sat down opposite the ghost he'd seen earlier. The ghost patted his arm, giving Harry the sudden feeling he'd just plunged it into a bucket of ice-cold water.

It was a momentary relief.

'What is happening to me' Harry thought as he gritted his teeth. The only reason anyone didn't notice his rapidly reddening face and his winces of pain was because they were all focused on was Zabini, Blaise, whose sorting was taking more than five minutes.

Quickly thinking of a plan that was sketchy at best and downright suicidal at worst, Harry pooled most of his magic into his hands, whipping up a small windblast under the table to extinguish his mana levels a bit, and focused on the feeling of pain.

'Runic Burnout!' he thought with all his might.

Suddenly his sight cleared, the weight on his head subsided, his vision cleared up, his mana filled back up, and his mind was filled with knowledge that wasn't there before.

Ping!

 **Due to successfully surviving a mental attack from an ancient artifact and later surviving its whiplash, your skill has leveled up three times!**

 **Runic Burnout Lv-5 (44%)**

 **A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.**

Ping!

 **Due to successfully surviving a mental attack from an ancient artifact and later surviving its whiplash, you've acquired a new skill!**

 **Mind Arts, Lv-3 (87%)**

 **The act of magically navigating through the many layers of a person's mind and correctly interpreting one's findings, either with others or one's own self. One of the rarest magics today due to its regulated teaching.**

 **Cost-50 MP per use**

Harry sighed. 'Whiplash' was something he never wanted to experience again.

Finally free of pain, he settled into his seat comfortably and looked towards the front of the Hall. He could see the High Table properly now. And there, in the center of the High Table, in a large gold chair; really more of a golden throne; sat a wizened and bespectacled ancient wizard with a silver-white beard that looked like it would go almost to the floor if it were visible, watching over the Sorting with a benevolent expression.

It was an image as stereotypical in appearance as a 'Wise Old Man' could possibly be without holding a staff and spouting random proverbs. The wizened wizard had applauded every student sorted with an unwavering smile that somehow seemed freshly delighted for each of them.

Harry recognized him at once. Dumbledore's silver hair was the only thing in the whole hall that shone as brightly as the ghosts.

His Observe on him showed nothing.

 **Albus Dumbledore**

 **Lv-?**

 **HP-?/?**

 **MP-?/?**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-?**

 **Vit-?**

 **Dex-?**

 **Int-?**

 **Wis-?**

 **Luc-?**

 **?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?**

Guessing that perhaps it was the magic in the castle or perhaps Dumbledore was too powerful for his observe, Harry looked around him at the table, deciding that he'd reserve using his Observes for when he'd go to the teacher's classes.

To the golden throne's left side was a man with sharp eyes, a face that was dour enough to make Harry think the man had just watched someone strangle his kitten, and greasy hair, who had applauded no one, but somehow kept managing to be looking straight back at Harry every time Harry looked at him.

Further to the left sat a pale-faced man Harry had an odd feeling he'd seen before somewhere.

'Perhaps in the Diagon Alley?' Harry shrugged. He had seen more people there than he cared to identify at once. To that man's left sat a string of three older witches who didn't seem much interested in the students. Then to the right side of the tall golden chair sat a round-faced middle-aged witch with a yellow hat, who had applauded every student except the Slytherins. Near her sat a tiny man standing on his chair, with a handlebar mustache, who had applauded every student, but smiled only upon the Ravenclaws. And on the farthest right, occupying the same space as three lesser witches was the mountainous entity who'd greeted them all after they'd disembarked from the train, Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds.

"Is the man standing on his chair the Head of Ravenclaw?" Harry whispered towards Hermione, who was sitting beside him, hoping he hadn't alienated what looked like the only person here who could give him some competition in the brain department.

For once Hermione didn't answer this instantly; she was shifting constantly from side to side, staring at the headmaster who was now giving out odd warnings about forests being forbidden and so on forth. Bah! As if any school rule would ever stop Harry Potter from exploring a _magical forest_ full of training opportunities. Harry decided almost immediately that he'd be exploring the forest that very night.

Curious what Hermione was thinking of him after he rammed a figurative train into her ideologies in the train, Harry cast observe on her.

 **Hermione Granger**

 **Lv-5**

 **HP-250/250**

 **MP-150/150**

 **Race-Witch**

 **Str-3**

 **Vit-5**

 **Dex-4**

 **Int-12**

 **Wis-5**

 **Luc-2**

 **Hermione Jean Granger is a Muggle-born witch and the daughter of two dentists in London. She grew up as a normal girl until, at age eleven, she learned that she was a witch and had been accepted into Hogwarts. She possesses a brilliant academic mind, and is a gifted student. She was very studious and bookish and can be very bossy and obnoxious.**

 **She doesn't know what to think about Harry, and as such, is trying her best to avoid thinking about him.**

Harry wondered what he was expecting. Maybe he'd expected an entire description worth of how she had secretly enjoyed it when Harry shattered her worldview and secretly had the hots for him. He shook his head. Best avoid that line of thought. Puberty hadn't even come into his line of sight and he still wasn't sure he actually understood the appeal of sex, girls and courting just yet.

"Yes, he is," replied Prefect Clearwater, "That is the Charms Professor and the Head of Ravenclaw, Professor Filius Flitwick, the most knowledgeable Charms Master alive, and an ex-Duelling Champion."

"Why's he so short?" hissed a student whose name Harry didn't recall. "Is he a half-breed?"

A chilling glance was leveled at the boy from many directions. It seemed the good Professor was well liked in his house. "The Professor does indeed have goblin ancestry," Prefect Clearwater answered flatly.

'How did that even work out?' Harry wondered to himself.

"Hssh!" shushed another prefect, though the Ravenclaw witch had spoken quietly.

Harry looked down at his empty gold plate. He had only just realized how hungry he was after all that had happened to him. Looking up, he realized that Dumbledore had just finished his speech.

"Now before we begin our banquet, I would like to say a few words. And here they are: Nitwit! Blubber! Oddment! Tweak!"

A figment of a thought vaguely along the lines of 'what in the name of galloping gargoyles was _that_?' did pass through Harry's head momentarily, but it promptly vanished as his mouth fell open.

The dishes in front of him were now piled with food. He had never seen so many things he liked to eat on one table: roast beef, roast chicken, pork chops and lamb chops, sausages, bacon and steak, boiled potatoes, roast potatoes, fries, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, gravy, ketchup, and, for some strange reason, peppermint humbugs.

The Dursleys had never exactly managed to starve Harry. He'd been way too resourceful to not sneak away a sandwich or two under his shirt, but he'd never been allowed to eat as much as he liked. Dudley had always taken anything that Harry really wanted, even if it made him sick to eat it all. For the first time in his life, Harry piled his plate with a bit of everything on the table and began to eat. It was incredible.

"That does look delicious." said the lady ghost in the dress sadly, before promptly disappearing with a poof of silvery mist.

One time, while almost inhaling a chicken leg, he'd thought he'd caught Dumbledore staring at him with not a twinkle in his eyes and a severe expression on his face, but when he looked again, the man was pleasantly conversing with Hagrid over the heads of two other teachers. Dismissing it as his imagination, he went back to the food and spent the rest of the dinner deflecting questions about his curiously long sorting.

Being Harry Potter, and being at the center of a curious Sorting event, and then being sorted into Ravenclaw was closely akin to being transfigured into a piece of cake and tossed into a crowd of Dudleys to get gorged on. He was being pulled apart in so many directions it was making his head spin.

Just then, Professor Dumbledore came to the rescue, "And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!" declared Dumbledore. Harry noticed that the other teachers' smiles had become rather fixed. Wondering why Professor Quirrell was pulling his turban tightly over his ears, Harry looked back at Dumbledore.

The Headmaster gave his wand a little flick, as if he was trying to get a fly off the end, and a long golden ribbon flew out of it, which rose high above the tables and twisted itself, snakelike, into words.

"Everyone pick their favorite tune," said Dumbledore merrily, "and off we go!"

And the school bellowed:

 _"Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,_

 _Teach us something please,_

 _Whether we be old and bald_

 _Or young with scabby knees,_

 _Our heads could do with filling_

 _With some interesting stuff,_

 _For now they're bare and full of air,_

 _Dead flies and bits of fluff,_

 _So teach us things worth knowing,_

 _Bring back what we've forgot,_

 _just do your best, we'll do the rest,_

 _And learn until our brains all rot._ "

'Oh dear lord!'

Tears streamed from Harry's eyes as the deafening cacophony of noise bled through his tightly clamped ears and shattered his canals, and by the time the slowly stopped with everybody finished the song at different times, Harry's ears were ringing. At last, only the Weasley twins were left singing along to a very slow funeral march. Dumbledore conducted their last few lines with his wand and when they had finished, he was one of those who clapped loudest.

"Ah, music," he said, wiping his eyes. "A magic beyond all we do here! And now, bedtime. Off you trot!"

And Harry, with many other traumatized first years, left, dazed to high heavens, for his common room.

* * *

Albus Dumbledore was a man defined by his mistakes. His sister's death, his brother's estrangement, his fight with Gellert Grindelwald, and of course, Tom Riddle.

On this fateful night, he was wondering if he'd have to add Harry Potter to the list now.

Over the decades, Albus had developed the habit of scanning through the first year children's' minds at the welcoming feast. While he knew that what he was doing was sketchy at best and downright criminal at worst, he felt that the risk of prosecution and the slight against his own morality was worth protecting the world from another psychopathic murderer. So, he identified and marked dark wizards in the school itself, using that information later to hopefully guide them out of the path of becoming a dark wizard, and failing which, use their identities in protecting of innocents.

Yet that little habit was also the reason behind his greatest weakness.

Pragmatic people liked to call Albus naive and unnecessarily forgiving to the point of being foolish when they would see him arguing to protect the Death Eaters from the Kiss or the Death sentence. "A dead dark wizard is a killer and murderer less!" they would scream at him. And to a certain degree, after the end of the last war when he had seen Sirius Black betray his closest friend, Albus found himself agreeing with them.

But how could he sentence them to death!

How could he stare them in their eyes, the very eyes that held nothing but innocence and dreams when they walked through the doors of the Great Hall when they turned eleven, and order the Dementors to get their souls sucked out!

He couldn't. And he knew that his inability to shake the images of the murderers and rapists as innocent children from his mind was one of the biggest liabilities to the light side.

His thoughts were conflicted as when he sensed his Deputy about to knock on his door.

"Come in, Minerva."

"What is this about Albus? You know I have the class with first years first thing tomorrow." Minerva seemed a bit frazzled, her slippers and fur gown evidence of her hurry in coming to his office on his call.

"I've come across something disturbing during my scans in the feast. It's …troubling."

Minerva's lips pursed. She had never approved of his actions. In a clipped voice, she spoke, "What is it?"

"It's about Mr. Potter," he paused and took a deep breath. What he was about to say was not to be said lightly. "His mind has shields. Shields well beyond anyone three times his age could ever have."

"What are you implying Albus?"

Her tone was worried, Albus noted. Minerva had shown unprecedented concern over the boy ever since she had returned, ripping into Albus after she returned from her trip to Diagon Alley to help him buy his supplies. She hadn't held back, and Albus hadn't dared contradict her promise of getting the boy out of that place.

Suspecting what he did now, he wasn't sure he even _wanted_ the boy to go to Privet Drive, a place he couldn't keep a watchful eye on him. With a sigh, he placed his suspicions on the table, "I suspect that night the killing curse did more than kill the dark lord and give Harry a scar."

Minerva was quick to catch on, "You suspect he's possessed. By You-Know-Who."

"I do."

"But you do know that such shields can also be a side effect of serious physical and mental trauma," Her voice was accusing, and Albus knew that she was referring to the time he had not done anything about Severus Snape's home life despite knowing of his father's routine abuse, forcing him to turn to the other powerful wizard that did offer to help him.

And now, the faded dark mark on his potions master's hand forever remained yet another reminder of Albus's devastatingly powerful mistakes.

"I know. But still . . ."

Minerva stood up. "Well, I doubt it, Albus. I studied with Tom Riddle in Hogwarts. If there is one thing you and I know about him, it's that he is incapable of any emotions except rage. Harry…is…"

"Still Minerva, keep an eye on him will you?" He said, tiredly massaging his forehead.

Minerva sighed. "I will. But Albus, don't treat him like a pariah like you did with Riddle just because you suspect he is dark. Doing that only pushed Riddle more to the other side. Do yourself a favor and don't make the same mistake with Harry."

With that one last warning, Minerva walked out the office. Albus gently took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose. So Harry was either dark, or he was abused so badly that he physically and mentally cut himself off from the pain of his past.

Either way, it was another devastating mistake on his own head. He sighed, before emptying a vial of a calming draught into his mouth.

* * *

Harry sat on his four-poster bed as sleep continuously evaded him. The Ravenclaw dorm beds had curtains, which with the word _Duro_ could turn solid and wouldn't open for anybody except its user. They also had a built-in silencing charm that muffled all outside sounds. You had to keep your alarm in your bed in case you fell asleep with the silencing charm on, but it was a small price to pay for the privacy it afforded.

The Prefect had led them to the Ravenclaw Common Room, which was located on the west side of Hogwarts at the top of a spiral staircase, presumably on the fifth floor, and had a door without a doorknob or keyhole, but a bronze knocker in the shape of an eagle. In order to enter the room, a person had to answer a riddle asked by the eagle knocker; if they answered incorrectly, they had to wait for someone else to get it right.

The Ravenclaw common room was one of the airiest rooms at Hogwarts. It was a wide, circular room with a midnight blue carpet, arched windows hung with blue and bronze silks, and a domed ceiling painted with stars. During the day, Ravenclaw students had an excellent view of the school grounds, including the lake, Forbidden Forest, Quidditch pitch, Herbology gardens and the surrounding mountains. The room was furnished with tables, chairs, and bookcases; and by the door leading up to the dormitories stood a tall statue of Rowena Ravenclaw made of white marble in all her snooty glory.

According to Prefect Robert Hilliard, the sound of wind whistling around the windows of the tower was relaxing while going to sleep.

It wasn't. It really wasn't.

It sounded like the Grey Lady and Fat Friar, who was the Hufflepuff ghost, were getting frisky with each other just outside the window. It was stupid. It was distracting. And if not for the silencing charm, nothing would ever get done.

With absolutely nothing else to do, Harry started writing the last of the thank you letters to the people who had sent him gifts in the ten years he had been absent in the wizarding world. A lot of them had given him money, which was rather nice and practical.

He'd also, on Professor McGonagall's suggestion, written a letter thanking Amelia Bones, the director of DMLE, for getting some of her Aurors to sort through his mail and remove any malignant or cursed items.

She had written back, assuring him that the Aurors who did it were happy to do it, since their jobs had become much easier after that night. Apart from her, he hadn't received any replies, but knowing that most of those people were parents who had children to send off to Hogwarts, Harry didn't expect any replies until Hogwarts had started and the poor parents finally managed to scrounge together some free time.

He finished up the last letter with a smile. It was to a girl six years of age who had sent him her lucky teddy bear and a note that had a message written in a messy scrawl. ' _Love you Harry Potter. - Jemma_ '.

Harry put away the fountain pen back into his inventory and put the letter in his book bag. He'd borrow Terry Boot's owl tomorrow to send it off. While he knew that practicing with quills were important as they were the only writing tool allowed in exams, fountain pens had an inimitable class of their own.

Besides, if his track record held true, he would soon manage to get a skill for penmanship. He could grind that and get better at it.

Ping!

And there it was, right on cue.

 **A new skill has been created due to writing a metric ton of letters.**

 **Calligraphy, Lv-10**

 **You can write with any writing instrument with your mastery of the art of script. This skill can make a significant difference in runes, arithmancy and other forms of written ritual magic.**

Ping!

 **Due to getting to level 10 in a special skill, choose one of the following calligraphic techniques to learn**.

 **-Single calligraphy technique: Marked up**

 **A technique which uses beautiful writing to get your teachers to give you extra marks. Increases reputation and opinion of teachers.**

 **Chance of success- 30+Level of Calligraphy**

 **Cost- Cool down period of 10 seconds**

 **-Runomancy attack: Runic Burst**

 **An attack which upon activation unleashes a number of rune amplified spells on your foe. The spells are chosen randomly out of your combat spell arsenal. The number of spells is only limited by the amount of times you choose to attack your enemy or your mana pool.**

 **Attack- (Number of spells x Wis)% damage + Dex**

 **Cost- Cooldown period, +5 seconds for every spell**

 **-Wandless Magic Mind Arts: Compulsion Script**

 **A technique that uses both magic and mind to push the reader's opinion of what you write to be positive, making them more likely to do what you wish them to do. An extremely essential tool for many magical politicians.**

 **Attack- Level of Wandless Magic + Level of Calligraphy**

 **Cost- Cost of Wandless Magic**

Harry looked at the options available to him and wondered which one he should choose. The first one was entirely useless to him. It was cool and would make sure that he would end up getting Os, but it would discourage Harry from hard work and that wasn't what he wanted.

The third one was very tempting. Harry had promised himself that he'd work for the betterment of werewolves after he'd learned of the difficult conditions they lived in, and that would require him going into politics eventually. This skill was obviously tailor-made for that. So he was torn between that one and Runic Burst.

Harry's Gamer Mind worked at speeds that wizards twice his age would have trouble comprehending. It quickly compared information he already knew, information he'd acquired by absorbing books, and his own personal knowledge archives trying to come up with a preference for one of them over the other.

The thing was, Harry deduced, his status as the Boy who Lived already gave him unprecedented popularity in the magical world, already giving him a boost of opinion with most people. If he played it right and gave a few regular interviews and open letters, then his political career wouldn't even need the technique. Plus, the description implied that there were politicians who knew the technique already.

That meant it could be learned.

But Runic Burst was a unique and rare move, and Harry knew that the Ancient Runes class offered in Hogwarts only taught most basic written spells. Even better, its attack was limited only by Harry's stat points.

'Maybe I should take it,' he thought. He was no slouch in Dex with a solid 12 with his +3 bonus added. And he could always improve later in the future. In fact, the plans of exploring the Forbidden Forest could be useful for that. Jumping across treetops had done a lot of good for his Dex so far.

Perhaps a sound investment now would lead to him reaping the rewards later.

"That settles it,'" Harry said as he clicked the second option from the three given options.

 **Are you sure you want, Runomancy attack: Runic Burst?**

 **YES/NO?**

He quickly pressed yes and the other two options disappeared. The knowledge on how to use Runic Burst flew into Harry's head.

Ping!

 **Congratulations! You learned Runic Burst!**

 **Calligraphy, Lv-10**

 **You can write with any writing instrument with your mastery of the art of script. This skill can make a significant difference in runes, arithmancy and other forms of written ritual magic.**

 **Special moves:**

 **Runomancy attack: Runic Burst**

 **An attack which upon activation unleashes a number of rune amplified spells on your foe. The spells are chosen randomly out of your combat spell arsenal. The number of spells is only limited by the amount of times you choose to attack your enemy or your mana pool.**

 **Attack- (Number of spells x Wis)% more damage + Dex**

 **Cost-** **(Cost of wandless magic x 50%),Cooldown period +5 seconds for every spell**

Harry closed the box and laid back on the pillows, any desire for sleep gone. He knew that he physically didn't need to sleep unless he had to refill his HP and MP, but it was a good way to pass time and rest his mind.

Remembering his idea of exploring the forbidden forest, he peeked out of his curtains and took a look at the wall clock in the dormitory before starting to get ready to explore.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Explore the Forest**

 **Reward,**

 **2000 Exp**

 **Failure,**

 **Eventual death by laziness arsehole**

 **YES/NO?**

Pressing yes, he put on his wolf jacket with the hood down and pulled out his second wand. He had read that there were spells to trace and test wands that had the Trace on them, so he wanted to avoid using his original wand.

So he put his holly wand into the inventory and quietly sneaked over to the window and opened it, hoping to all heavens that he wouldn't come face to face with two amorous ghosts.

Luckily, he didn't.

Climbing onto the ledge of the window, he paused for a moment to wonder how on earth he was about to get down to the bottom of the tower. It was a straight 120 feet drop interspersed with nothing other than the occasional flagpole, gargoyle or a window jutting out. His well-honed Parkour skill was going to be put to heavy testing.

Eyes darting around the surface of the tower, he plotted a tentative course down to the bottom of the tower and judging his speed and direction, Harry let himself fall. Grabbing onto the jutting flagpole a few feet below the window, he dug his hand into the gaps between the stone bricks and swung around until he found adequate footing. Quickly letting go of the edge he fell and caught the edge of the stone below it.

Descending so, he managed to get down about forty feet until the first major obstacle hit. All the stone below him had been smoothed out through hundreds of years of erosion. There were no more ledges to grab onto and no more holes to stick his feet into.

Pooling his mana into his hands, Harry slammed his hand into the stone in an attempt to use Earth element magic on it and create a notch for him to hold onto.

"Ow!" he said with a wince as his fingers cracked against the stone. Hogwarts' magic was too strong for him to bend the castle using magic. Manipulating the wall was out of the question. Harry momentarily considered using his firepower to propel himself mid-air but discarded the idea. Fire would cause too much attention. Earth was out of the question. Wind he wasn't too confident in. That only left one option.

It was time to try out the new trick he'd been practicing.

Extending his still hurting hand up into the air above him, he let his mana flow out into the air around him, feeling it saturate his surroundings as it reached out farther and farther, searching for what Harry wanted. Luckily, it had been raining during the Grand Feast, and the air was full of it.

Harry closed his eyes and his brow furrowed as he focused with all his might, twirling his hand in a gentle swinging motion as he pulled the mana back in, pulling with it the humidity in the air surrounding him.

Water vapor condensed around his free hand, creating a blob of water that grew more and more in size as water drew in from the nearby atmosphere.

Harry didn't know a lot of science, but he understood Force. Mass times acceleration. With Gamer's Mind, he ran through the basic motion formulae and calculated the force with which he'd hit the ground and compared it with the viscosity of water, coming up with the thickness of the layer of water he'd need to cushion his fall. Creating a thick wall of water under him, he jumped and pushed away from the tower, free falling straight towards the ground.

But all was not well with his plan. Almost instantly, the layer of water started to crumble. Harry's eyes widened as he realized that he hadn't accounted for the resistance of the wind, which was breaking away chunks of water from his protective shell by the second.

With the ground approaching at an increasingly faster rate, Harry's eyes widened as a humongous tendril of mana shot out, almost as if of its own volition, and pierced the ground. Harry could only gape for a moment. He had no idea how he'd reached a target so far, but he didn't have time to theorize. With a not inconsiderable amount of difficulty, he bent it to his will and raised it to form an incline to catch him in mid-air.

Slamming into the makeshift slide, he skidded down the ramp and landed face first on the ground. He lay there for a minute, letting the pain in his limbs fade before he dared to try and get back up again. Luckily, the water had shielded him from the initial landing, but the rocks and stones on the floor hadn't left him without his fair share of cuts and bruises.

"That went a lot worse than I'd imagined," Harry groaned into the ground.

After a few minutes of catching his breath and dusting himself off, he shaped the earth back into its initial shape and made his way past the groundskeeper's wooden hut, trying not to tremble under the sheer force of his loud snores. With a deep sense of anticipation, he stepped into the forbidden forest.

The crescent moon lit the entire forest with an almost dream-like light.

The trees seemed sentient, filling the air with a haunting song with their rustling leaves that spoke of the thousands of years of battles they'd witnessed and the secrets they would forever keep.

Harry shivered and pulled his jacket around him tighter.

He quickly found a tree low enough that he could use it to climb up to the higher ones. Clutching onto a branch, Harry pulled himself up onto it and jumped up, tightly grabbing onto the foot long thick vines than swung from the top and climbing onto a solid branch that was high enough to be out of the reach of ground predators and low enough for him to escape if anything on the tree tried to kill him.

He took a deep breath. Looking straight ahead, his mind plotted out routes along the branches, ways that he could take running and jumping across the treetops and branches that would be most efficient for DEX training.

With some trepidation, he started heading for the one that ran to the deepest part of the forest.

The enchanted forest beckoned him into its heart. The deep, haunting ballad of its ancient song called out to him. In a corner of his mind, Harry absently compared the song to the call of a siren, calling onto its prey before choking it to death.

Almost as if sensing the very thought, the song turned a bit more severe, as if reprimanding him.

Harry realized why this was called the forbidden forest. This amount of mana…the sheer magical weight was not to be taken lightly. There was some ancient magic in this forest. Harry sent out a mental plea to whatever mysterious creature's magic he was feeling, asking it to not crush him like a bug and give him a chance to prove himself worthy to roam its realm.

Suddenly, almost as if on cue, a pack of beautiful pure white wolves broke out from the various bushes and trees that surrounded the pathway of trees Harry was jumping and converged under him and started running with him under the trees.

Knowing at first glance that these were not werewolves, Harry cast observe on their collective group while adjusting his path to take him a bit higher into the treetops should the wolves try to attack

 **Forbidden Forest Wolf Pack**

 **If two werewolves meet and mate at the full moon, which is extremely rare, the result of the mating will be wolf cubs which resemble true wolves in everything except their abnormally high intelligence. Such a litter was once set free, under conditions of extreme secrecy, in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts, with the permission of Albus Dumbledore. The cubs grew into beautiful and unusually intelligent wolves and some of them live there still, which has given rise to the stories about 'werewolves' in the Forest.**

 **They think Harry is interesting and are wondering why the immortals sent them to evaluate a two-legged one.**

Harry, upon reading the last line, jumped towards the branch of the next tree, grabbing it with both hands and swinging his whole body around the branch, diffusing the inertia of the high-speed run he was in before swinging into a stable perch.

Noticing that he had stopped, the eight wolves trotted to a halt and sat down on their haunches around the tree, staring up at Harry with their unusually intelligent eyes. Keeping the last line of their description in his mind, Harry climbed down the tree slowly, not making any sudden movements.

The wolves backed up, almost as if realizing that Harry wasn't at ease. Harry gave them an uneasy smile.

"So…how do you evaluate me?" he asked, "Is there some sort of test? Want me to pull a rabbit out of my hat? Thought I'd have to do that in the sorting but as it turned out, that didn't happen. And I don't have a hat. I do have a jacket though. I could pull something out of that, maybe."

Harry was starting to ramble, hoping to Gods above that the Forest wouldn't kill him with its extremely powerful magic. But the eyes of the wolves looked mildly amused before the largest one shut him up with a bark.

A smaller wolf emerged from the middle of the pack, heading towards Harry slowly, who froze his limbs to prevent himself from lashing out. Unpleasant memories of another wolf were being stirred in him. The wolf sniffed at Harry's hand for a second, before turning back to his pack mates and letting out a shrill yip.

One by one, each of the wolves came up to him and sniffed him until only the largest one remained. After a moment of tense staring, Harry decided to make the move. He maintained eye contact and, very slowly and carefully, bowed. Much to his relief, the wolf lowered his own an unmistakable bow back, before letting out a howl that rippled through the forest.

The crushing mana that Harry was feeling immediately lightened and started flowing around him again. The forest, or whatever entity was testing him, was done. The message was clear.

You are worthy.

The howl, though, apparently, was not for his judgment, but a call, because a moment later, over a dozen smaller female wolves burst into the clearing in a trot with some unbelievably adorable cubs that looked barely a month old. Harry stared flabbergasted as one of the tinier ones ran over to him and started using its paws to claw Harry's pant legs.

The entire pack had into the clearing, some licking their coat, some playing, clearly knowing that Harry was no threat to their young.

Ping!

 **Quest Completed!**

 **Explore the Forest**

 **Reward,**

 **2000 Exp**

Harry took all that in with a small smile. Bending down, he noticed that the box above the little cub's head read 'Billy'. Momentarily wondering if Dumbledore had given him that name, he reached out to pet its head, at which point little Billy decided to remind him that he was a wolf.

CHOMP!

"AARRGHH! SCREW YOU BILLY!"

Harry had spent a few more minutes with the wolf pack nursing his poor abused hand that had been through so much that evening, before he waved them goodbye and set out jumping through the trees again, this time feeling a lot freer without some ancient sentient being attempting to cave in his skull with the pressure of its magic.

Much to his happiness, his original objective had been achieved and his Dex had gone up by quite a bit.

 **DEX-12(+3) = 15**

With that done, Harry started heading back towards Hogwarts to get some shuteye, but fate had decreed it not to happen, as Harry stumbled onto a talk between two half-men-half-horses. Making sure that he was well hidden, he kept an ear on the conversation.

"You have been coming here every night for days now Firenze, the elders are concerned."

"They have nothing to worry about Ronan, The stars are clearer here," Firenze replied in a dreamy tone.

"The stars are clearer back home as well Firenze." Ronan's voice held a small bit of steel.

"Do not worry brother. I have no wish to run off or abandon our herd. That _is_ the concern of our elders is it not?"

"The elders worry that you have strayed too deep into the Divine arts," Ronan said passionately, "They are worried that we may lose you."

"They have nothing to worry about."

There was a moment of silence, in which Harry wondered what they were talking about.

"Thank you for reassuring us brother," Ronan finally said and trotted back off.

Harry, seeing an opening, immediately, cast an Observe on Firenze.

"Your scrying magic will not work on centaurs Harry Potter," Firenze said, cutting through Harry's surprise at no window popping up, "Our kind invented it."

Harry paused, before warily dropping out of the tree. "How'd you know I was there?"

"The stars spoke of you coming soon." He looked up at the sky. "Mars has been bright these days. My people find it disturbing. Change does upset so many, regardless of who they are born as."

His eyes refocused on Harry. "But you don't fear change, do you, Harry Potter? No…you revel in it."

He turned and trotted off towards a muddy path on the forest floor. "Follow me, Harry Potter, I have promised to bring you to someone who has been waiting for you." Harry took off behind the centaur.

"Who's been waiting for me?"

"All will soon be clear," came the rather cryptic response.

"Add a turban and a crystal ball and you could make a killing at carnivals," Harry muttered under his breath before following him.

* * *

Harry's mental rant about overly clichéd mysterious centaurs had continued on endlessly while he had walked on with the four-legged creature. It was, however, interrupted when they suddenly stopped dead at the edge of a rather unusually large clearing in the trees. Firenze looked straight ahead and said in a grave tone, "Harry Potter. I would advise you to not use your magic in there. The ancient beings do not take kindly to such insults."

Harry was about to ask what he was he talking about when he suddenly felt the wards.

Throughout his time as the Gamer, Harry hadn't felt many wards. There was the Privet Drive wards, which had since dissolved, and the massively powerful Hogwarts wards.

This…this feeling of raw waterfalls of protective mana surrounding the clearing…it trumped them both.

Harry felt like he was being squeezed through a tight tube as he stepped into the clearing. His breath stopped as his lungs were squeezed dry and he slowly pulled through the wards. As his breath came back to him and his eyesight cleared, Harry's senses were assaulted by a veritable myriad of light and sound. Even with Gamer's Mind, it took a solid few minutes for the light bulb to go off in his head.

'So they were the immortals testing me,' he finally realized.

Phoenixes, dozens of them flew around the clearing that had formed where before there were only trees. Most of them were scarlet and gold with the occasional cheery blue. Their feathers glowed faintly in darkness, casting a dancing light upon the clearing giving it an almost dreamlike beauty. On the ground were nests, many of which each held a single egg each that glowed with a brilliant inner fire.

Suddenly, Harry realized what he was witnessing. He gasped.

"Be honored Mr. Potter," Firenze said, a slight bit of awe filtering into his own voice, "The immortal beings convene and lay eggs only once a century. Very few of your kind have ever witnessed this wondrous event. Your ability…the one that shields your mind…it has made you by far the youngest of those few,"

Harry didn't have to be told. The cries of the hundreds of phoenixes flying around, some tending to their young and some warming their eggs while others playfully fought about in the air, they were going straight to Harry's heart and lifting his spirits up so high that Harry felt almost dizzyingly high. A small part of his mind worried that he would have withdrawal issues afterward, but he couldn't care less at the moment.

He was too busy witnessing a miracle.

Firenze led the still dazed Harry to one of the nests that contained an egg. As they arrived, a beautiful scarlet phoenix dove down gracefully and landed next to it with a flap of her wings, leveling a flat stare at him. Harry could feel his Gamer's Mind barriers melting away as if welcoming the warm presence of the ancient being, letting it look right into his mind.

After a few moments, she withdrew and looked away, turning to the egg and brushing it with her tail feathers, letting out a gentle trill. With a gentle pulse, the egg started glowing brighter than ever before, and a crack appeared on its side.

Before his eyes, the crack spread, and soon the shell split open into pieces and revealed the whitest little chick Harry had ever seen with a tiny beak and big feet and stubby wings and a tail that was too small for its body. As the mother phoenix cleaned off all the remaining egg fluid from the little chick's feathers and helped it onto its feet, its eyes opened to reveal the brightest amber irises Harry had ever laid eyes on.

After being helped onto its feet, it stumbled around for a bit, taking in all the bright lights and colors around it until it caught sight of Harry. Letting out a happy little chirrup, it twaddled over to him on those tiny little legs.

Stopping right in front of him, it looked up at him and let out a commanding chirp.

Harry let out an incredulous chuckle, before bending down to pick it up. For some reason, his eyes were pricking. Raising the little chick to eye level, he turned to his four-legged companion in confusion.

"What is happening?" he asked Firenze, for he was thoroughly baffled.

Firenze smiled. "I would have thought it was fairly obvious Harry Potter. She has chosen you as her companion."

Silence.

"But the books said that phoenixes only chose the pure of heart," Harry finally said quietly, not because he wanted to, but because a stone had suddenly materialized in his throat, "I'm…not. I've done…horrible things. I don't deserve this. I'm not…not even close to pure of heart."

Firenze looked at him for a moment before looking back at the newborn phoenix; who'd decided to curl up in his palms and take a nap; and answering, "I believe the young one would beg to differ."

He stood there quietly for a while, wondering what he could say to that. Deciding to drop this line of worthy-or-not conversation, he asked, "So what do I call her? What is her name?"

"I do not believe she was born with one," Firenze said, "What do you wish to call her?"

Harry thought for a moment, before replying, "Hedwig. I want to call her Hedwig."

* * *

 **So, I'm open to suggestions and ideas about changes that you'd like to see from here on out. When I started the rewrite, my idea was to seed a few new plotlines and remove most if not all of the outright copying that existed in the early chapters. Those chapters are now mostly done. Other than a few specific scenes, I don't have much of an idea what to change in the next 8 or 9 chapters.**

 **So, if you have read the old version of those chapters(Uploaded as a separate story in my profile), then please do let me know your suggestions. I'd really appreciate them.**

 ** _P.S. Be nice. Just cos I encourage constructive criticism doesn't mean I encourage verbal abuse, either attacking or defending me. I've seen a few of those in the reviews lately._**


	9. Book-I:First Class Magic

Chapter 8:

When Nymphadora Tonks, daughter of Andromeda Tonks nee Black, had joined Hogwarts in 1984, she was a bright bubbly girl with dreams of becoming the best potioneer to ever pass through the hallowed halls of Hogwarts. She spent a lot of her nights from her first through fifth years reading through the books, memorizing formulas, going through reactions and writing down notes. Many of her days were spent trying to impress Professor Severus Snape with her encyclopedic knowledge of potions, trying to persuade him in to giving her an apprenticeship and set her on her path to her very own Potions Mastery.

It seemed hopeless at first, but it had finally paid off. At the end of her seventh year, Professor Snape had called her to his office mere hours before she was supposed to leave for the Hogwarts express and told her that he would be offering her an apprenticeship. That meeting had ended in Professor Snape almost physically throwing her out of his office after she had whooped in a voice loud enough to wake the entire castle and in her excitement, hugged the professor.

The dour man had not taken kindly to that.

Nymphadora had then proceeded to brag about her upcoming apprenticeship all the way to King's Cross to her friends and all the way back home to her parents.

Unfortunately, things weren't going to be so good for her the rest of the summer.

Despite her mother's insistence that she take her wand with her while going out to the city to buy groceries one day, she had refused. "I can't use it anyway Mum! Ministry owls will be there in a jiffy and the Aurors will be on my case for breaking the statute and I'll be expelled! I can't be expelled after Snape _finally_ agreed to apprentice me!" she'd exclaimed.

That had proven to be her first mistake.

While coming back home from the store, she passed through the local park, where she caught sight of a little boy of no more than five years of age staring at her. With a cheeky grin, she checked around to see that no one was looking their way, bent down and used her Metamorphmagus abilities to convert her nose into a pig's snout and oinked. The boy giggled and ran away, and Tonks, with a smile on her face, continued on her way back home.

That was her second mistake.

A man named Grunnings had been out and about in the park for his morning walk. As a man who ran the majority of an international crime syndicate and was also diabetic, morning exercise routines were a daily thing for him. Yet, this morning was quite different, because he'd seen something extraordinary. He had seen a girl change her appearance in inhuman ways from afar and followed her with his bodyguard, greedily fantasizing about how much money the right people would pay for a freak like her.

Tonks was unaware of her tail and walked happily all the way back to the suburbs where she ducked into an alley to take a shortcut into the street parallel to the one she was on, upon which her house was.

And that was her final mistake.

Grunnings instantly gave a signal to his bodyguard, who dashed into the alleyway and shoved a handkerchief dripping with chloroform up her nose. They then stuffed her into a bag, not too concerned about breaking bones, and carried her nonchalantly across the road to their car. Throwing her into the trunk, they drove away.

When she finally woke up, she found herself in the hands of degenerate thugs who called her a freak and tortured her physically and mentally for hours, trying to get her to change her appearance again. And after a week full of torture and being broken, again and again, she had finally given in and changed her face.

The man, Grunnings…he'd been there, celebrating with a glass of red wine. After she'd finally given in, he'd grabbed his cheeks and forced open her mouth, pouring down half a bottle of red wine down her throat, mumbling fanatically about how she was going to be making him a rich man.

She was too thirsty to care at the time.

The next day, her legs were shattered again, undoing any healing that had happened in the past week, and her mouth was taped shut. They hadn't even bothered to blindfold her as they had taken her to the abandoned building in London.

She didn't know why. Maybe they had wanted her to see her life shatter in front of her eyes.

The man that was driving the car had jerked on her hair, pulling her ear to his mouth and had told her of how they would get to play with her for one last night before shipping her off to her buyer. Then he'd injected her with some drug that made her sight extremely fuzzy and her mind sluggish.

There was very little she remembered after that.

There were sounds of gunfire and explosions…a whoosh of bright fire…a demon's voice…the feeling of being carried by someone with air rushing across her face…then passing out.

When she had woken up on August twenty-fifth, she was in St. Mungo's. Her parents told her between sobs that they'd found her half dead outside their house. The Aurors had searched the place she'd described, but they had found it entirely empty.

Healing in magical world was more advanced than the muggle world ever could be, and thus, Tonks was free to go the very next day. A healer had used a memory buffering spell to dull her memories of the capture since Tonks had refused point blank to obliviation.

She wanted to keep the memories.

After a few days of rest, during which she had shut herself in her room and only seen her parents at mealtimes, her mother had tentatively asked if she would be returning to Hogwarts this year for her apprenticeship. She had dressed within minutes, gave her concerned mother a tired smile hoping to alleviate some of the poor woman's worries, grabbed her wand, and apparated to Hogsmeade, where she'd learned that it was going to be the first day of classes for the new firsties.

As she walked through the halls of Hogwarts towards the dungeons, absently musing that had she been a year younger, she would have gotten to see the famous Boy Who Lived in his first year before graduating. She shook her head and turned right, walking forward a few more feet before knocking on the door that opened into Professor Severus Snape's office.

"Come in."

The professor was at his desk, presumably writing out the lesson plans for the day.

"Your apprenticeship starts from after Halloween Miss Tonks. I presume you haven't forgotten how to read the calendar. Because if that is the case I'm afraid I must retract my offer." He said without looking up.

Last year, Tonks might have even cracked a smile at the quip. Now, she just didn't have the strength.

"About that, Professor. I'm afraid that I am going to have to refuse the offer. There have been some…extenuating circumstances," she said in a flat voice.

Professor Snape's hand stilled.

"Is this your idea of a joke Miss Tonks?" His voice was tight. With a pang of nervousness, Tonks realized that he was getting angry. "Do you _realize_ how many students I have refused before I agreed to apprentice you?"

Tonks flinched, and then instantly regretted it.

"I'm sorry Professor," she said, keeping her eyes down while trying to hide her flinch.

The side effects of the incident were kicking in. She had been showing problems staying around men for long. When she'd flinched away from her father the time he had gone to hug her, he'd almost cried. She spent most of her time since then trying to curb this instinct. It was getting better, but it wasn't gone.

Despite her attempt to hide it, Snape must have caught the flinch, since his voice suddenly lost its anger.

"Is there anything you wish to tell me?" he asked quietly. When she looked up, his black eyes met hers and a sob wrecked through her as tears rolled from her eyes.

She told him everything.

"They will not be escaping punishments for their crimes." The man's eyes burned with rage. "I will make sure of it."

She thought of the screams and the few wisps of memories she had from the time she was drugged. "They are taken care of," she said.

Snape didn't ask her what she meant.

"Very well then," he said after a few moments of silence, "Is there any course of action you wish to pursue now?"

Tonks thought for a minute.

"I was thinking of the Auror program."

The professor stared at her for a second before pulling out a fresh piece of parchment. He scribbled something on it, put it in an envelope, cast a sealing spell on it and handed it to her.

"Take this to Alastor Moody."

She eyed the envelope before taking it and putting it into her pocket. She nodded at her old professor and turned to leave.

"And do be careful Nymphadora."

Tonks gave him a small smile and closed the door behind her.

* * *

 **You have slept in your own bed, HP and MP have been restored 100% each. All ailments and negative status effects have been cured.**

The message greeted Harry as he was woken up by his alarm clock ringing loudly beside him.

Thankfully, his magically silencing bed hangings were closed, and the clock was inside the hangings on the bed, so his early alarm didn't end up waking up the entire dormitory. Rubbing his eyes, Harry groped for his glasses, putting them on once he found them. The sight in front him focused in his eyes.

Harry stared.

There, on his stomach, sleeping with her head tucked under her wing, was Hedwig the chick. Except that she wasn't Hedwig the chick anymore.

In what looked like a few hours, she had grown into Hedwig the prepubescent flaming albino turkey.

It was almost as if somebody had unloaded a vat-full of growth hormones into the phoenix's feed. Her beak was longer, her pale tail feathers had gained a golden sheen towards their tips, her wings and tail were more proportional to her body, and her overall size had almost doubled. She looked a bit lanky like her body had suddenly grown a lot in length while forgetting to compensate in breadth.

Harry, a bit worried about his new friend's health, cast an Observe on her.

 **Hedwig**

 **Lv-30**

 **HP-** ∞ **/** ∞

 **MP-** ∞ **/** ∞

 **Race- Caucasian Phoenix**

 **Str-89**

 **Vit-56**

 **Dex-33**

 **Int-20**

 **Wis-15**

 **Luc-24**

 **Hedwig is an immortal phoenix. She has the ability to regenerate. She will undergo a full life cycle at the end of which she will burst into flames & rise from the ashes as a newborn chick. This Burning Day will happen less and less as she will start to age slower and slower in her life cycles. The first burning day usually occurs a few days after the birth of the Phoenix. She also has unrestricted teleportation to places she has seen before and boasts magical tears and song.**

 **She thinks Harry is pretty cool but she is currently asleep and will rip his hair out one by one if he tries to dump water on her.**

"Well," Harry muttered under his breath, deciding that the irony of dumping water on a phoenix to wake her up was not worth his hair.

Scrapping the ideas he'd started cooking up, he gently lay her down back on the bed. Covering her up with a blanket, Harry went and freshened up. None of the others were up yet, so he had free reign over the showers. After taking his time to freshen up, he went off to the to the common room bookshelf to look up some spells.

After first using the ID books, he'd soon realized that he could only learn a skill from a book once. For instance, from absorbing his reference Potions book, he'd gotten a respectable Lv3 in the new skill to start with, but that meant that any further leveling up could only be done by hard work. It took him hours of studying his school books to get up to Lv4. Theoretically, he'd mused, there were books out there that, had he absorbed to create the Potions skill, would have started him out at Lv10 or even more.

Added to that, there were only a precious few books that were old enough to have gained magic of their own, allowing them to be absorbed. Unfortunately, that meant that freshly printed books could only be learned entirely by hard work.

Harry sighed. 'Guess it isn't fair to get cheats for everything,' he thought, 'besides, reading was fun.'

One of the first thoughts Harry had after getting Hedwig was about how he would carry Hedwig around with himself since she was too young to actually fly around in the forbidden forest by herself when Harry was in class and too noticeable to leave in the dorms unguarded. Furthermore, her burning day was close. Even after thinking all night, he'd failed to come up with a concrete idea. Surrounded by the one-sided reflective windows of the Ravenclaw boys bathroom, however, he had a rather interesting thought.

There were windows in the office buildings of Muggle London that let in light from the outside, but didn't let light from the inside go outside…maybe something like that…

Harry, with this seed of an idea, went over to the Common Room bookshelves and located and pulled out three books.

Looking through the ' _Construction Magics by Colin Furze',_ Harry went on to the windows section and looked up the spells for the glass panes that went into tinting windows. The spell was simple enough, and there were little to no wand movements involved. He quickly memorized the charm, thankful that it was an easy one.

Ping!

 **Spell learned!**

 **Speculo lateres**

 **This spell is used in the construction of mirrored glass out of plain glass.**

 **-20 MP per use**

He opened up the ' _Beginner's Guide to Spell Modification and Creation by Griselda Marchbanks'_ and skimmed through the first few pages reading about how the most common examples were _Protego Duo_ and _Protego Maxima_.

He was quite surprised when he read that _Wingardium Leviosa_ was actually a spell just called _Leviosa_ and it only had _Wingardium_ as a prefix to focus the magic of the user on only the feather since the youngsters that were mostly taught the spell as an introduction to Charms had incredibly volatile magic. That way, if their dangerous and sometimes explosive magic was focused entirely on the feather, no bystanders would be hurt.

He quickly turned over to the prefix and suffix glossary on the back that showed which suffix to add to a spell to add what property to it. Running a finger down the list, he quickly matched the word _vestimentus_ to cloth. Jotting down a couple of quick notes from the "How-To" section of the book, he removed _lateres_ from the original spell and converted the text into the appropriate tense before adding _vestimenta_ to it. Then, tearing off a piece of Dudley's old t-shirt, he cast his new spell on it.

" _Speculo Vestimenta_ "

The piece of cloth turned glassy for a second and returned to its original state, completely unchanged. With a shiver of anticipation, Harry turned it over and sure enough, it was entirely transparent from that side.

Ping!

 **Spell learned!**

 **Speculo vestimenta**

 **This spell is used in the construction of mirrored cloth out of plain cloth.**

 **-15 MP per use**

"Yes!" Harry exclaimed with glee. He'd done it! He'd created a spell of his own!

Harry was grinning widely as he turned to his last book, ' _Easy Spells to Fool Muggles'_ and leafed over to silencing charms. After a few minutes of reading and trying to decide which spell was the best, he settled on _Quietus_ , which reduced the target's volume to almost inedible levels, over _Silencio,_ which silenced a target entirely.

' _Quietus, Quietus,_ ' He muttered, practicing the wand movements until…

Ping!

 **Spell learned!**

 **Quietus/Sonorus**

 **This charm is used in quietening of sounds. Often used to counteract the amplifying charm, Sonorus.**

 **-10 MP per use**

Harry raised an eyebrow. So he could learn the counter of a curse and vice versa just by knowing one of the two spells. But surely that could only be applicable if the spell _had_ a clear counter…

Nodding to himself, Harry put the books back and ran back to the dormitory and back into his bed, closing the curtains. He pulled out his school robes and cast the Mirroring Spell and the Quietus on its front pocket.

Hedwig had woken up by that time and was staring at him as he did the spell. She let out a Questioning trill at Harry, who grinned as put on his robes.

"I'm making sure you can come along with me to the first day of my classes. We'll have fun," he said with a smile.

Hedwig let out a happy little chirp, flapping her wings as she flew onto Harry's extended palm, who then carefully deposited her into his front pocket. With the spells, she'd be able to see and hear everything through the cloth while Harry could only just about hear her through the _Quietus_ charm if she needed him. The pocket had already had an extension charm placed onto it in Diagon Alley according to Professor McGonagall's wishes, who wanted him to be able to carry his stationary without it straining his book bag. Of course, Harry still had his inventory, but he couldn't tell her about it, so he agreed to the undetectable extension spell (' _Capacious extremis_ " McGonagall had incanted at his robe's pocket) which was coming in use now by providing Hedwig with a comfortable space to stay in.

So together they went boy and bird, off to the great hall to get something to eat.

Harry was surprised to note that no one from any other house was up yet, with only a few teachers like Professors McGonagall, Snape and Flitwick at the staff table, eating. Professor Dumbledore was there too. He gave Harry a smile, eyes brightly twinkling before he went back to chewing on his sausage. Harry decided to try and observe him again, hoping that whatever was blocking his Observe powers last night would be gone now.

 **Albus Dumbledore**

 **Lv-?**

 **HP-?/?**

 **MP-?/?**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-?**

 **Vit-?**

 **Dex-?**

 **Int-?**

 **Wis-?**

 **Luc-?**

 **?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?**

'Damn it! No luck. So his level must be too high for me to observe him,' Harry thought as he went over to the Ravenclaw table. After devouring a full spread breakfast and dropping pieces of fruit down his pocket for Hedwig to eat, Harry saw Professor Flitwick coming down the tables to hand him his schedule.

"Good morning Professor."

"Good to see you up so early Mr. Potter. And good morning to you as well of course. Now here you go, there is your schedule," he said, before leaning closer and quietly adding, "And between you and me Mr. Potter, your mother was a practically a prodigy when she was here and your father wasn't a slouch either, so I wouldn't worry too much about doing badly in the classes. It's in your blood."

The tiny professor grinned at him before heading back to the Head Table again.

Harry smiled thankfully. The professor had probably assumed that he couldn't sleep well because of being nervous for his first day of class. While that wasn't the case, Harry was more than grateful for the sentiment. He had a feeling he was going to like the Charms class.

* * *

His first class that day was Charms with the Hufflepuffs, where they were lectured for half an hour by the diminutive professor who stood on a single huge book that floated in the middle of the podium in front of the class. Harry heard Terry Boot, who sat beside him violently suppress a choke at the sight of someone, let alone their head of the house, standing on a book. Harry chuckled, thinking, 'Godric Gryffindor wasn't kidding about Claws being over-obsessive book lovers.'

He then refocused on Professor Flitwick, who had progressed from describing the plans for this year's class to talking about spells.

"Now let me tell you something interesting," he said, "How many of you have read the first chapters of your transfiguration book?"

A majority of Ravenclaws and two Hufflepuffs raised their hands.

"Well, for those of you that haven't, a part of it describes how conjuration is a NEWT level magic, so difficult that you wouldn't learn about it until you reach the beginning of your seventh year," he said while turned around towards the wall behind him. He pointed his wand towards the wall and swung his wand in the shape of a horizontal S before giving it a flick.

" _Aguamenti_ ," he intoned and a fountain of water sprung from his wand, splashing against the wall. "Can anyone tell me what this charm was? Yes, Miss Granger."

"Sir that was the water-making charm. It is used to create and shoot water out of the caster's wand. It's one of the spells that we will be learning this year." Hermione rattled off.

"Textbook Miss Granger! Take two points." The professor exclaimed, before continuing, "Professor McGonagall will teach you in depth about the dangers of transfiguration, but put in a simplified manner, conjuring is one of the most dangerous forms of magic out there. So what about _Aguamenti_? Are you not creating water out of nothing in this spell? Is this not a conjuration? And if it is, why is it taught to first years like yourselves? Anyone who answers will have earned five points for their house."

Not a single hand rose. Harry even felt Hedwig still in his pocket. She was finding this interesting too.

"Nobody? Well, let me give you another clue," The professor was having fun. He pointed a finger at his wand's tip, intoning, " _Ebublio._ " A purplish bubble the size of Harry's fist surrounded the wand's tip.

"This is the bubble charm, a variation of a charm that is used in underwater swimming. This bubble is unbreakable and doesn't allow anything from the outside reach the inside. Now, let us try this spell again. _Aguamenti._ " the professor chanted again, swinging and flicking once again. This time, however, the wand gave only a few spurts of water before it stopped entirely.

 _Swing and flick…almost exactly like the hand movements I used for the water vapor trick…_

Suddenly it clicked in Harry's mind and his hand flew up.

The professor acknowledged him with a grin. "I see Mr. Potter has it. Go on Mr. Potter. Tell us."

"It's not a conjuration," He said, stuttering slightly, a bit unnerved at sight of the entire class staring at him. Upon receiving an encouraging nod from the Professor, he steeled himself and continued on, "The spell pulls in water vapor from the surrounding air and converts it to water, spouting it from the wand."

"Right in one Mr. Potter! Take five points. Excellently put. The answer is that it is NOT a conjuration. This spell was invented based upon the Cooling charm, to cool down water vapor in the air, and then combining it with the Summoning charm, to pull the water vapor to the wand and maintain a constant flow. You'll learn more about how it was done in your third year, if you choose Arithmancy as an elective." he explained. The entire class was listening. Professor Flitwick was clearly a pretty good teacher.

"Now Mr. Potter, since you have answered this question, perhaps you'll be able to answer my next one."

He turned back towards the wall, which was still wet from his first water summoning spell. He once again incanted, " _Aguamenti._ "

This time, there was no steady stream or fountain of water like the last time. A powerful gushing water stream of pure destructive force struck the wall with a boom! The class watched with gaping mouths as the water stopped and its aftermath was revealed. There was a massive crack in the wall where the water had struck it.

"Now," Professor Flitwick continued, "the spell was the same, the incantation was the same, the wand movements were same and the caster was the same. Yet the effect was entirely different. Mr. Potter, would you like to take a guess at what was different the second time?"

Harry's eyebrows furrowed. "Power?" he took a guess.

"A common and quite popular answer Mr. Potter. But unfortunately, entirely wrong." Flitwick said. He looked around at the entire class, meeting each of their eyes as if he wanted to convey an important and life-changing message.

"Intent. Intent is the difference between the faint stream of water and a destructive jet that could cut stone. Intent is the difference between the magic of the light that will brighten your way and the light that will blind you. Intent is the difference between the fire that warms and the fire that burns. _Intent is the key to magic_. Remember my words my students, and commit them to your memory. Magical power will not allow you to cast great spells. The best it will do for you is to change how many spells you can cast. _Intent,_ however, is the key that will forever help you in practicing powerful magic."

The Professor somberly looked down at his own hand which held his wand.

"There are no limits to magic. So long as you have a powerful enough imagination with the intent to back it up, nothing is impossible. All you need to do…is believe."

* * *

The Charms Class was being discussed by every Ravenclaw the entire way to the Transfiguration Class. On the way over, Harry had been approached by a few people who wanted to know how he'd known the answer to the question. He had tried to explain the basics of the states of matter to them, at the end of which he'd ended up with a new skill.

Ping!

 **Due to you teaching, you gained a new skill!**

 **Teaching, Lv-1**

 **You impart to your student a piece of what you know.**

 **(Wis+Int)% how much the person understands**

 **+20% if their Int is lower than yours.**

So that was pretty sweet. Going over to his skill tab, he took a look at his academic skills, which were basically his skills in the subjects, and was glad to see that the class had raised his Charms level.

 **Charms, Lv-5 (8%)**

 **Your skill in the art of charms with your magic is shown in this skill.**

Apparently the classes were actually pretty good for helping up his skill levels. He had no doubt that he'd have to work hard to get another level up in any of the subjects' skills, but the level up that he had got was quite welcome. Harry briefly wondered if there was some sort of quest for doing really good in subjects and getting points.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **You da MVP bruh! Win your house the house cup!**

 **Reward,**

 **Respect from the teachers**

 **Your housemates love you**

 **10% more chance of getting laid.**

 **50,000 Exp**

 **Failure,**

 **Housemates scorn you**

 **Your chances of success in your political goals decreases**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry scoffed at the getting laid line. The Game was starting to develop a sense of humor. 'Why not?' he thought, pressing Yes on the quest, 'I plan to do good in all the classes anyways.'

Stepping into the Transfiguration classroom, he took in the sight before him. They once again had the class with Hufflepuffs, who all seemed to be admiring the long arches and beautiful architecture of the classroom.

There, on the board was written a single formula,

 **T = {(WxC)/(SxA)} x Z**

 **where,**

 **T=Transformation Success rate**

 **W=Wand Movement**

 **C=Concentration**

 **S=Subject's Sentience Level**

 **A=Body weight**

 **Z=Magical Capacity**

After the entire class settled down, the side door opened and a stern looking McGonagall entered and the class started.

"Transfiguration is some of the most complex and dangerous magic you will learn at Hogwarts," said Professor McGonagall, her gaunt face frozen into a grave mask, "Anyone messing around in my class will leave and not come back. You have been warned."

With that, her right hand slipped into her sleeve, pulling out her wand with a flourish and using it to tap her desk twice. Almost like she'd broken some invisible table-shaped bowl holding the material in the shape of a table, the wood turned liquid before smoothly reshaping itself into a pig. A couple of Muggleborn students let out small yelps.

It looked around curiously, before fixing its eyes of Susan Bones's pigtails and snorting. Susan let out a shrill shriek, upon hearing which the Professor gave another flick of her wand, turning the pig back into a desk again.

"Transfiguration is a dangerous discipline. More dangerous than Conjuration. More dangerous than Ritual magic. More dangerous than high Arithmancy. Even more dangerous than Apparition. In the days of the Founders, Apprentices were not allowed to learn Transfiguration until their seventh year. Unfortunately for you as well as myself, research has since shown that Transfiguration must be learned and practiced at a young age in order to improve your capability as an adult."

She paused to give a warning look to a pair of snickering Hufflepuffs in the back before continuing on, "It means that as your Professor, I am obliged to walk the fine line between my responsibility to keep you all safe, and to make you into competent Transfigurers. There is no dearth of accidents in transfiguration, nor is there any lack of deaths. You should be quite scared of making any mistakes, because if the accident does not get you, you will have to deal with me and that, I assure you, will not be pleasant."

Several students gulped. Harry noted that most of them wizard born students. It made sense since they understood what conjuration and apparition were and how dangerous they could be.

Professor McGonagall stood up and walked around her table to the board behind her desk, "Why, I believe, you must be wondering, is Transfiguration so dangerous? What so incredibly terrifying about turning a teddy bear pink or turn a matchstick into a needle?"

"Transfiguration is not permanent," said Professor McGonagall, writing it down on the board in neat capital letters. She then repeated it in a sharper voice, "Repeat this phrase a thousand times in your head. Write it down in your notebook. Draw it onto the insides of your eyelids. Memorize it at all costs. Forgetting this rule can and _will_ have lethal consequences. Mr. Potter. Stand up. So you understand what I am telling you?"

Harry stood up and stiffly nodded, "Yes Professor."

"Do you now?" McGonagall asked, before turning around and muttering a spell, encasing her desk in a transparent bubble. 'The _Ebublio_ Charm," Harry realized with a start. It was the spell Professor Flitwick had used to contain the air near his wand tip while demonstrating the _Aguamenti_ spell.

McGonagall pointed her wand at the table, before twisting and pulling away. In a cloud of brown that slowly disappeared into the colorless air inside the bubble, the table disappeared.

Turning back to Harry, she asked, "Do you understand what I have done here Mr. Potter?"

"You have used a Banishing charm," Harry replied, "in order to make the table disappear."

"A good answer, but incorrect," McGonagall said, before looking around at the class and asking, "Would anyone else like to take a guess?"

No one raised their hand. McGonagall turned back to the giant bubble at the head of the classroom, before explaining, "What I have done here is convert the wood of the table into air of a similar composition as the atmosphere surrounding it. Now do tell me, Mr. Potter, since you seem to be one of the few who understand, what do you think will happen when I breathe in that air and then the Transfiguration wore off?"

Harry tapped his fingers on the edge of his desk, fidgeting nervously as he tried to think of an answer to that question. Gamer's Mind went to work on the question, drawing conclusions from all the science he knew…if someone were the inhale the air, they would take in the oxygen, including the oxygen that was created by Transfiguration…it would be absorbed into his bloodstream…travelling into his muscles…being converted into complex compounds and materials…if it turned back to wood suddenly…converted back to the complex organic compounds that wood was made of…the entire metabolism would go haywire.

Energy carrying ATP molecules would implode, molecular transport systems would collapse, muscles would atrophy, nervous system would shut down, and the body would simply shut off.

 **You have gained +1 Wis and +1 Int for coming to a scientific conclusion.**

Harry paled.

McGonagall's face was stiff as she nodded, waving her wand to make her table materialize back out of thin air before removing the Bubble charm from it. Harry knew that she saw his terror clear as day on his face. "Yes, Mr. Potter. You would become extremely sick and if the wood is not taken out of you soon enough by proper magical healing processes, you will die."

"Professor," Harry said quietly, if rather urgently, "if something like that ever happens, and someone inhales or drinks something that has been transfigured, is there any way of maintaining the transfiguration? Keeping the air as air until every bit of it goes out of your body?"

"Not by an individual," Professor McGonagall said, "While the healing cure follows a similar procedure, it is extremely precise and needs the proper equipment. Sustaining a Transfiguration on your own is an incredible drain on your magic which increases with the size of the target form."

She turned to the formula.

"The principle of Transfiguration is represented by this very formula. For centuries, it has been used to predict if a transfiguration is magically possible and whether it will have negative effects on the subject and has many other uses. Note how the wand movement and concentration increase the success rate while body weight and subject's sentience decrease it. Your magical capacity tells how long you can maintain the transfiguration. Note it down."

Quills scribbled as students rushed to note down the formula. Harry could tell that most of them were shaken. He was surprised to notice that his hands were trembling a bit. He put down the quill and looked back up towards the Professor, who'd decided to sit down at her desk.

When everyone finished, Professor McGonagall leaned forwards. "Today's lesson was not meant to teach you to Transfigure. It was to teach you what not to. You must never attempt to Transfigure the human body without a designated spell to do it. You must not, under any circumstances, Transfigure something into a consumable, air, or anything that might enter the human body. This is a reason why the formula states that the mass of the subject must be constant. If it's not, the transfiguration is unsafe. If you are unsure if a particular free transfiguration is safe, apply the formula. If it is not _well_ above the average success rate, you _must not do it._ "

She looked around, driving her point in. "Is that well understood by every single student?" she said.

"Yes," they all said.

After casting a piercing look around the class, she told them to pull out their notebooks and went on to teach them the different types of Transfiguration, including the branch of silent spell-less Transfiguration most taught at Hogwarts, called 'Transformation' and the existence of Transfiguration spells for specific transformations. She also talked about inborn abilities such as Animagus or Metamorphmagus, as well as Potions such as Polyjuice Potion.

And so, after taking a lot of complicated notes, they were each given a match and started trying to turn it into a needle. Harry was one of the few that completed the Transformation that class, after which, he received a new level up.

Ping!

 **Skill has leveled up twice because that INSANE class you just had.**

 **Transfiguration, Lv-4(25%)**

 **Your skill in transfiguration branch of magic with your magic is shown in this skill.**

* * *

On Wednesday, he'd observed the Defense Professor, Professor Quirrell, while he was teaching Susan Bones how to cast a basic Deflecting Charm to deflect away the coloring paintball spells that her partner for the class was supposed to be sending at her. Oddly enough, he'd lost much of his stutter the moment he'd started teaching the class, which made Harry incredibly curious about him.

 **Quirinus Quirrell**

 **Lv-?**

 **HP-?/?**

 **MP-?/?**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-?**

 **Vit-?**

 **Dex-?**

 **Int-?**

 **Wis-?**

 **Luc-?**

 **?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?**

Harry's eyebrows had disappeared right into his hairline.

'Professor Quirrell is as powerful as the Headmaster!' Harry thought with a not inconsiderable amount of shock. Honestly, he couldn't fit the image of the professor with what he was seeing on his screen.

But perhaps, Harry thought after a while, all this stuttering was a ruse to make people underestimate him, just like Harry was doing with his own abilities. Or perhaps, he didn't want to be famous for being as powerful as Albus Dumbledore. Harry could understand that too since he didn't quite like his fame either.

Harry had then resolved to give the man his privacy.

The Herbology class after that was decent since Professor Sprout made it quite fun, but something about Herbology reminded him a bit too much of the Dursley's, so he couldn't really enjoy it. Neville, though, was brilliant at it, as Harry managed to witness since his Herbology classes were with the Gryffindors.

Soon afterward, Hedwig had finally had her first burning day. It was a bit difficult to watch, but she had promptly grown up to her adult size by the end of the next day. Harry calculated the next burning day to be around the middle of October and resolved to be more prepared for it next time. After her first Burning Day, Hedwig had taken to flying off into the Forbidden Forest for most of the day in order to spend some time with other phoenixes that lived there. She would happily chirp to Harry at night about all that the magical birds do at day, and Harry, who had started associating her various sounds with her emotions, managed to react appropriately to her stories despite not quite understanding them.

As for classes, also with Gryffindors, he had the History of Magic, the most boring class that anyone could ever imagine existing. One would think learning from a ghost would be quite exciting, but Professor Cuthbert Binns managed to turn even the most interesting topics mundane. He just droned on and on and on. There was no roll call, so quite a few Gryffindors simply tended to leave the class midway and Binns never even noticed.

And so in a flurry of magic and classes and homework, the first week at Hogwarts passed until Friday came.

Friday was an important day for Harry. It was the day he was finally going to have a chance to meet the infamous Professor Severus Snape. Harry knew that the man knew his mother, which was why he really wanted to talk to him and find out more about his mother as her friends had known her.

"What have we got today after breakfast?" Harry asked Terry as he poured sugar on his porridge.

"Double Potions with the Hufflepuffs," said Terry. "Snape's Head of Slytherin House. They say he always favors them. I've heard he's even made first years cry."

Poor Neville, who had Double Potions right after their own periods and was sitting right beside them - having come over to talk to Harry - was scared out of his mind. He looked terrified. Harry offered him a few words of encouragement, but honestly, he wasn't too optimistic considering all that he'd heard about the man.

But to hope on was to live on, so he hoped on and went off to the Potions classroom.

* * *

Potions lessons took place down in one of the dungeons. It was colder there than up in the main castle, and it would have been quite creepy enough even without the preserved animals floating in formaldehyde glass jars on bookshelves all around the walls.

Professor Snape started the class by taking the roll call. He paused at Harry's name, looking at him for a second before continuing on. After he'd finished, he walked to the center of the podium he stood on, fixed them all with a stare and spoke.

"You are here to learn the subtle science of potion making," he began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they caught every word. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here, many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect that many of you will really understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching the mind, ensnaring the senses…I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew glory, and even stopper death. The only question is, are you capable of learning the strongest kind of magic there is, or are you a bunch lazy good for nothing dunderheads?"

More silence followed this little speech. Hermione was on the edge of her seat, looking desperate to start proving that she wasn't a dunderhead. Harry used this moment of silence to cast an Observe at him.

 **Severus Snape**

 **Lv-39**

 **HP-15400/15400**

 **MP-8200/8200**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-16**

 **Vit-26**

 **Dex-31**

 **Int-33**

 **Wis-23**

 **Luc-11**

 **Severus Snape is a potions master and a converted dark wizard. He has a distinct dislike for dark wizards, but has to pander to their kids because he has to maintain his dark reputation to keep his potions master license being taken away. He is loyal to Hogwarts where he is Head of Slytherin House and Potions professor. He is a Master of Potions and enjoys chamber music and relaxing potion making.**

 **He doesn't like Harry because of his father bullying him when he was in school but is reserving his opinion of him, hoping he has some of his mother's intellect.**

The last line left Harry a bit shaken. His father…was a bully…

Harry shook his head. He didn't know enough. There had to more to the story than his father just being a bully…there had to be. And if there was, he'd find it out. Until then, he need stick to the plan. Do the best he could do in the classes.

When Harry finally focused back on the Professor, he had the class's complete and undivided attention. Realizing with a jolt that he wasn't writing anything down, he quickly noted down all the claims the professor had made in his speech. The 'stoppering death' thing needed research.

Professor Snape noticed Harry writing the down what he had said and given him an odd look, as if debating whether or not to do something, before he turned and started the lesson.

'Good,' Harry thought. Perhaps he could yet convince the Professor that he wasn't like whatever his father had been all those years back.

The Professor then went through the lesson, outlining what they would be doing as they got out their equipment and paired up. In their first class, they were learning how to use the equipment and the techniques needed to chop, cut, slice, and dice properly. With Gamer's Mind up, Harry was working well as he cut the ingredients in the precise shapes that they had been instructed to cut them into.

About halfway through, Professor Snape had come over to his and Terry's table and nodded a bit before moving on.

At first, Harry did find it a bit weird that the man had stared into his eyes for a few awkward seconds before moving on, but he quickly remembered that Professor McGonagall had once told him that he had his mother's eyes, and that the professor was a friend of hers. He couldn't help but sad for the black robed man.

"P-Professor Snape?" a Ravenclaw asked, raising his hand a few minutes later.

"Yes, Mr. Cornfoot?" Professor Snape asked, turning to the table where Cornfoot stood.

"You mentioned the insides of the cauldrons slowly erode and feed the potions metal as we stir, so does that mean they'll…grow thin and…you know…break?" he trailed off and gulped. Evidently, he too had heard about the Professor's bias against muggleborns and all non-Slytherins. Harry looked on with a bit of interest, curious how the Professor would react.

"No, Mr. Cornfoot, they normally don't. The erosion is quite slow. I doubt you'll have to worry about buying a new one during your years at Hogwarts. That is, unless you plan to brew any aggressive or corrosive potions in them."

Much to the surprise of most of the class, the Professor's tone was rather flat, devoid of any disparaging comments or tongue lashings.

"Oh, okay, Professor, thank you," Cornfoot said, relief flooding his face when the situation did not turn out as he had expected.

The potions master turned away, walking around some of the other stations to make sure the Hufflepuffs were cutting correctly before he circled back around and headed up to the front, correcting a few of the students on his way. Harry finished up his dicing and looking around, noticing that most of the others were finishing up as well.

"Now set up your cauldrons and adjust the flame to a medium," Snape said, "You will be using the ingredients you just prepared to make an acidic infusion of _Atropa Belladona_ , which will be an essential component of the burn salve which you will be making in the next class. Are all the burner burning now? Very well then. You will be answering questions while your cauldron warms up."

He made his way through the Ravenclaws asking one or two questions each, taking a point for every wrong answer, until he reached Harry. He paused for a second before asking, "Tell me, Mr. Potter, what would I get if I added powdered root of asphodel to an infusion of wormwood?"

Harry swallowed, this was a tricky one. His mind went to the _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi by Phyllida Spore_ , where he'd read that asphodel could act a stabilizing agent and wormwood contained benzodiazepines which were powerful hypnotic agents. So an infusion of wormwood would be stabilized to create…"A very powerful sleeping potion sir?"

"Correct Mr. Potter. It is known as the Draught of Living Death. Now, where would one look to find a bezoar?"

This one was quite straightforward. "A bezoar is the kidney of a goat Professor. So I'd say the lower abdomen of a goat."

"And what, Mr. Potter, is the difference between Monkshood and Wolfsbane?"

Ah! A trick question. Harry smiled a bit before he answered, "They are two members of the same _genus_ Professor Snape. Although Monkshood has applications in sleeping potions while Wolfsbane leans more towards healing."

Professor Snape simply gave a small nod and moved on to the Hufflepuffs who fared much worse than the Ravenclaws.

Things got a lot more exciting halfway through the brewing. Harry had been so engrossed in the potion making that he hadn't even noticed that he'd started sensing the slow flowing waves of magic floating through the class…until suddenly he felt an erratic flux in the magic to his right.

It was coming from Ernie Macmillan's cauldron.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the Professor's neck had snapped towards Ernie as well. He could sense it too. Harry knew it!

And sure enough, within a few seconds, clouds of acid green smoke and a loud hissing filled the dungeon. Professor Snape rushed forward, grabbing a boomslang tooth off of Hannah Abbott's bench and dropping it into the bubbling potion before snatching the ladle out of Ernie's hands and giving the potion two quick stirs, making it settle down.

He then proceeded to rip Ernie a new one.

The rest of the lesson was without incident. They brewed their infusions and bottled them in glass phials, marking them with their names. They left them on Professor Snape's table before leaving. Harry hung back outside the classroom door while everyone else went off to go start on an early homework free weekend.

He was conflicted, thinking to himself about how he would ask the professor about his mother. There was no way he could get him to talk about her by asking him directly.

'Maybe I could ask him about how he could sense the magic change in the potion,' he mused, 'I can do it too, so if he could help me with that, maybe I'll get some magic sensing skill or something like that. And if it goes well, maybe I could sneak in a couple of questions about Mum to him!'

Something about the plan just felt right, and Harry decided that it could be the way to go. If he gave up one piece of knowledge about himself to the professor, it could act as a springboard to persuade him into telling him about his mother. McGonagall had said that he was a friend of hers. Besides, Harry was sure that the Professor had felt the magic change in Ernie's potion too. The sharp look that he'd given the cauldron _right_ when its magical flow turned erratic had given him away.

He turned around and knocked on the door to the classroom.

"What is it Mr. Potter?"

Harry let himself in, instantly finding himself pinned under the Professor's stare. Steeling himself, he spoke, "How did you sense that…fluttering in Ernie's potion?"

"What are you talking about Mr. Potter?"

In for a penny, in for a dime.

"I know you felt it. The magic was going haywire around the potion. I did too. How did you do that? Why can't anybody else in the class do it? How do you sense magic? Is this because of Voldemort-" Harry started rambling.

"Enough Mr. Potter," Professor Snape snapped, "I'd suggest you don't use that name. If you do feel the magic around you, then I don't need to tell you why. You must have felt it stir each time you uttered it."

"But why? It's just a name…isn't it?"

"I swear to heavens it should be Minerva explaining this," Professor Snape tiredly muttered under his breath.

"Most people will find themselves uncomfortable talking about this, but let me give you an impromptu history lesson," he finally said, "The practice of saying "You-Know-Who" instead of the Dark Lord's proper name began when he put a Taboo on his name during the Wizarding War. The Taboo was a spell that acted as a magical beacon, calling the Dark Lord's servants whenever someone uttered his name. Saying that Tabooed name shattered most weak wards and was a death warranty to whoever said it. I would highly recommend being more sensitive about how you use that name Mr. Potter. A lot of people are still afraid. Shoving that fear in their faces by yelling out the name of their families's murderer is nothing short of insulting."

Harry was shocked into silence. He hadn't thought of that. An enchanted _name_ of all things…And even if the name hadn't been spelled, the Professor was right. Shouting the name of a murderer in public was a douchebag thing to do, to say the least. Apologetically, he muttered, "I…I didn't…I didn't know."

"No, you did not. And about this so-called magic sensing that you seem to possess…it is a side effect of an art called Occlumency, which involves organizing your mind through meditation. It allows the user to be more sensitive to magical currents around them. When properly trained, this ability can differentiate between various spells and wards, and is an incredible tool for duelists," Snape said, not breaking his flat tone.

"Can you teach me -" Harry started saying hopefully before being cut off.

"A teacher cannot show favoritism to a student by offering them extra classes Mr. Potter," Professor Snape said, before picking up his eagle feather quill and starting to grade the potions. Harry stood there for a minute, disappointed, before turning to leave the classroom.

"Detention Mr. Potter. For the next three weeks. Evenings on Saturdays," Harry turned around with shock. The professor hadn't looked up from his papers. "Don't be late. "

Harry grinned happily and ran out.

* * *

 **Added a lot of parallels and ideas about magic to the chapter. I'm going with a modified version of the theory of Transfiguration from ognoa, hpwiki, and hpmor combined with the canon. Also,** **"Shoving that fear in their faces by yelling out the name of their families's murderer is nothing short of insulting" I honestly think that this is one line that someone should say to every single fanfic Harry Potter that goes around reveling in the shock that people show when he says Voldemort. Don't you agree?**

 **I'd forgotten how much I liked that first scene since I first wrote it. Hope you liked it.**


	10. Book-I:Fight or Flight

Chapter 9:

The prefect's bathroom was something of a legend at Hogwarts.

From first through seventh years, there were many who spoke of this sensual and titillating place that was built as a hard-earned reward for the tired and overworked prefects and how it stood in magnificent contrast to the rickety showers and plain stalls that the rest of the castle had to live with. Rumors of its contents included a pool sized bath, a massive diamond-encrusted chandelier, and multicolored crystal faucets that gave perfumed and soapy water to the desired combination of the lucky one who had the fortune of using it.

But getting in and experiencing its joys was not easy.

The door to the prefect's bathroom was entirely too well guarded. A massive metal armor stood across its door, blocking the path of anyone intending to access the bathroom. It only let people in after they said the password, which was a jealously guarded secret amongst the prefects. Even people who were dear friends or romantically involved with the prefects and _did_ get to see the bathroom, never knew the password. Furthermore, the rumors of the knight getting violent towards anyone who tried to bypass it without the password, magically or otherwise, were not entirely wrong.

The protections on the bathroom were almost entirely impossible to get past.

Thus, it wasn't much of a surprise that Harry had managed to bypass the protections within five seconds.

Inside, he floated in the massive bath, holding up a book in one hand and a wand in the other while Hedwig flew around the room with cheerful trills, exploring around and doing aerial loops and turnabouts. The mermaid that was painted on the stained glass window delightfully clapped and giggled at the phoenix's antics.

Saturday mornings had classes for upper years and were completely free for first years, so no one was there to catch him mucking around. Besides, Harry had decided, wasn't this the real reason first years had the weekend off? So that they could explore the castle?

Blue screens kept popping up in Harry's vision as he progressed through the book.

Ping!

 **Spell learned!**

 **Reparo**

 **This charm is used to seamlessly repair a broken object and works on most materials.**

 **-25 MP per use**

Ping!

 **Spell learned!**

 **Periculum**

 **This spell is used to send out red sparks from the wand with a vast range. Often used to signal that one is in danger, and thus in need of help.**

 **-15 MP per use**

Ping!

 **Spell learned!**

 **Mucus ad Nauseum/Febribus ad Perdere**

 **This spell is used to opponents a cold and a runny nose. Counter Febribus ad Perdere cures cold**

 **-10 MP per use**

The fact that he _automatically_ learned the counter to a spell if he learned the spell and vice versa was something Harry felt was a _very_ exploitable facet of the Gamer abilities.

He had an inkling of a suspicion that his ability to pick up on magical currents was what had made it possible for it to happen, but there was no way to make sure. But he did have a sound theory behind it. His Gamer's Mind could feel the magical waves of the spell he learned, so it simply reversed the frequency, mana patterns, and phase characteristics of the spell, and voila! He automatically knew how to cast the counter-curse. All he needed after that was the incantation, which was provided in the notification that popped up.

He'd been lucky until now.

So far, the magical waves were simple enough that he could easily learn the counters to them, but he had a strong suspicion that it would get much more difficult to pull off with more complex spells.

 **Spell learned!**

 **Leviosa**

 **This spell is used to make things float. Its often used with a prefix.**

 **-5 MP per use**

With that one last spell, Harry swam over to the edge of the pool and climbed up, putting on his clothes.

"Com'ere Hedwig."

Hedwig burst into flames right where she was flying a second ago and appeared with another burst right on Harry's shoulders. Waving a goodbye to the mermaid on the glass, Harry walked over to the door of the bathroom.

He left the bathroom the same way he'd entered, popping into his Instant Dungeon's dimension, blowing a hole in the wall, walking through the hole and then breaking out of the ID.

The red sky outside shattered, showing the bright blue skies of the sunny day in Hogwarts, and a random kneazle that was passing by the door jumped a foot into the air and ran away as an eleven year old boy appeared into existence out of nowhere.

He let Hedwig go free to play in the forest and jogged off towards the Ravenclaw Tower.

* * *

Harry walked into the common room to find Terry, Stephen Cornfoot and Michael Corner on one of the tables, each thumbing through their own books, writing what Harry soon realized was their Monday's Transfiguration essay.

Harry paused and frowned. He had been remiss in making friends with his dorm-mates. He had talked to each of these guys throughout the last week at various times, but he liked to work and spend a lot of time alone, so he didn't really know any of them really well. Luckily for him, his celebrity status often worked in his favor and gave him an advantage in social interactions. Most people already liked him and were quite friendly with him, so he didn't have to worry too much about them hating him from the moment they met him.

Harry was glad for that.

"Hey, Harry!" Terry's voice broke him out of his thoughts.

"Morning, Terry," Harry chimed back, "How is the Transfiguration essay going?"

"It just never ends, does it!?" Michael exclaimed, throwing his arms up in the air. Harry and Stephen dodged the droplets of ink that flew from the quill in his hand, "How are _we_ supposed to explain why Metamorphmaguses-"

"Metamorphmagi," Stephen corrected.

"-Metamorphmagi can change their appearances! Isn't that contradicting itself! How can it not kill them if they can transfigure themselves? And don't they teach human transfiguration in the sixth year! How does that even- Argh!"

Harry listened to Michael's rant with a bemused smile as he pulled a chair out and sat on it.

"You've finished the essay haven't you? Why don't you help us out here?" Terry asked curiously.

"Alright then" Harry pulled a parchment and a quill to himself. "Well, its a bit like this." He drew three circles on the parchment before writing down, 'Metamorph' 'Human Transfiguration' 'Animagus' in them.

He pointed at the circles and spoke to the three Ravenclaws around him. "These are the primary oppositions that most people make with the whole 'No transfiguring people or stuff that goes into people' theory. The Professor explained why Animagus wasn't outright free transfiguration last week-"

"It's limited," Terry interrupted, "They can't go transforming into whatever they like. Limited transfiguration isn't free transfiguration, so it's not the kind of Transfiguration that we're doing."

"Exactly," Harry agreed, "It's the same with Metamorphs. They are limited too, otherwise, the ones that had fought in the last war would've been able to turn into a horde of bees or…I dunno… ten dragons… and destroyed the Death Eaters. As far as I've read, they can change only their facial appearance, bone length and skin color. That's pretty limited. And like Terry said, limited transfiguration is not free transfiguration."

Harry crossed off the Animagus and Metamorph circles before continuing.

"And human transfiguration is usually done by spells, since it's impossible for anyone to know a human's anatomy and the target transfiguration well enough to imagine it all in their head. I think I read about it in some book from the common room shelf last night."

He neatly wrote down the word _proficisentor._

"Pretty sure that's the spell that is used in human transfigurations. So, if you have to make your hair yellow, then you just add the prefixes and suffixes and it comes down to…"

He paused to remember what the spell was, before writing down _pilorum proficisentor flaviosa_ on the paper.

"This spell. I mean, it looks pretty hard to do. That's probably why they teach us that in NEWT year."

Stephen, who had been quiet the entire time, spoke up. He had a small smirk on his face. "I think I have a pretty good idea of why McGonagall was warning us against practicing human transfiguration."

Harry looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Just take one look at the third years and above," Stephen said, "They're all just spending their time trying to impress some girl or boy. Don't you think they'd change their own appearance in a jiffy if they could? Make themselves prettier or more handsome? Even if they risk losing a nose or a head of hair? You see where I'm going don't you?"

"I do," Terry replied, stroking his chin, "McGonagall was trying to make sure that all of us respect the dangers of Transfiguration enough to not just go transfiguring ourselves into Lockharts to get girls? That…actually doesn't sound unlikely. I did read that puberty does pretty crazy stuff to you…" Terry spoke while stroking his chin.

Harry was impressed. He'd underestimated Stephen and Terry.

"Exactly!" Stephen exclaimed, "And even though human transfiguration and Metamorphs and Animagi are much less dangerous than free Transfiguration, McGonagall is also trying to make sure that we accept who we are as people. Most people probably get over their issues by the time they get to the final years, so that's when they start teaching human transfiguration!" Stephen said excitedly.

"And…thus…not…free…Transfiguration! That's the essay done!" Michael exclaimed. Stephen looked at him, slightly taken aback, before he realized what had happened.

Michael had been writing his essay the entire time Stephen and Terry had been on their tirade.

Terry smacked him over his head. "Don't you have any sensitivity you buffoon! We've been discussing the theory of transfiguration and how it affects the psychology of wizards, and you haven't even been paying attention!"

"Oi!" Michael protested, rubbing the back of his head with a wince, "I've been listening! Besides, my essay is done and yours isn't, so you don't exactly get the moral high ground."

Stephen and Terry sent a dirty look at him and picked up their quills to finish up their essays.

"Well, I'm off to the dorms. Have to change out of these robes. Why didn't you tell me we could go without these on weekends!" Harry asked.

"You didn't ask. Now come on. I'll go with you and let these philosopher types finish their essays." Michael said with a smile. Together, they both walked up the stairs to the Ravenclaw dorm. Anthony Goldstein was still snoring off in his bed. Harry looked at the wall clock. It was eleven in the morning.

"He's still sleeping?" Harry said with a wry smile on his face.

Michael chuckled. "Let him be, its Saturday."

Harry grinned and put away his robes. They wouldn't survive what he had planned for the rest of the day. Michael was rummaging around in his book bag as he turned around to leave.

"I'm off exploring. I'll turn up at the flying class and then probably turn up straight in the midnight astronomy class. Don't worry about me if you don't see me much today." Harry said.

"Your detention with Snape?"

"Starts next Saturday."

"What about the Potions essay?" Michael asked in dismay. "Surely you couldn't have finished everything!"

"Already finished!" Harry tossed over his shoulder, running down the stairs and out of the common room.

* * *

As Harry walked through the corridors of Hogwarts, he opened up his skill list and scrolled over to his ID Create skill.

 **ID Create, Lv-5 (20%)**

 **Used to create Instant Dungeons. Higher the level, stronger the dungeon.**

 **Current list-**

 **Empty Dungeon- no monsters.**

 **Monster Dungeon- Zombies**

Harry had unlocked the Monster Dungeon- Zombies in Hogwarts a few days ago while repeatedly breaking in and out of IDs in order to grind and level up his skill. Since then, Harry had checked out a book from the library to explain exactly what the differences were between Inferi and Zombies were. He opened _Newt Scamander_ 's book to the required paragraph and read it.

 _Zombies are "living dead" creatures that dwell in the southern part of the United States of America. They are able to be identified by their greyish skin and rotten smell._

 _While zombies have much in common with Inferi, they are in fact, two distinct creatures. While inferi are made out of soulless dead bodies, Zombies were created out of live humans by a dark wizard in an experiment who wanted to use the zombified person's soul to sustain himself._

 _However, this turned upon him as it turned out that creating a zombie takes a permanent drain on the creator's magic. The wizard was turned into a squib after making his sixth zombie, and being defenseless against the half-dead monsters, was devoured. Many others have experimented with zombies but all have either been killed or turned into squibs and then into zombies_

 _Many attempts have been made to eliminate zombies by wizards, however none have been very successful, due to a zombie's ability to infect muggles with a bite and turn them into new zombies. While wizards have been proven immune to this infection, a zombie's extreme strength can prove a danger to anybody. Fire is their only known weakness since they are very flammable._

 _Impossible to domesticate and known wizard killers._

 _Class XXXXX_

'Fire…I can do fire,' Harry thought to himself. He looked around to make sure no one was watching and then intoned clearly, "ID Create: Zombies!"

The world's sky turned red again as Harry took out Riddler's wand, sheathing his own back into the inventory and ran off towards this dimension's Forbidden forest and entered it.

After all, where else would the zombies be?

He quickly flitted in and out of the leaves of the trees he was running on, making every landing and grabbing every branch he wished to. Nothing seemed impossible for him. It was the first time Harry had truly appreciated how his high Str and Dex had affected his body. Every muscle seemed perfectly toned, responding to his every thought and command, not showing even a single trace of fatigue as he jumped, ran, and swung from branches and treetops, searching for his first opponent.

A massive thunderous crack emerged from somewhere deeper into the forest.

Harry was about to wonder what it was, when suddenly he caught something out of the corner of his eyes. It was a man…or at least looked like a man, putrid grey going by skin color, his eyes were popped out of his sockets and his skin was peeling off in several places. Pressing down his sense of disgust, Harry quickly observed it.

 **Zombie,**

 **Lv-6**

 **HP:300/300**

 **MP: 20/20**

 **Str-25**

 **Vit-6**

 **Dex-2**

 **Int-1**

 **Wis-1**

 **Luc-0**

 **An undead come back to life for one thing and one thing only, the meat of the living. Thinks the word Zombie is offensive to zombies and wants to be called a Walker.**

 **Kill to get- 50 Exp**

Harry dismissed the screen and tossed a fireball at the zombie from his position in the tree, scoring a one-shot kill. The zombie disappeared in a shower of dust, leaving behind a 2 £ bill. He jumped down from the tree, pocketed the bill, and then walked further into the forest in search for more zombies.

It didn't take long for Harry to find what he was looking for. Or more precisely, for what he was looking for to find him. Less than five minutes into his walk, he was ambushed and quickly surrounded by a horde of zombies in a forest clearing.

Harry looked around. There were 5….14…..28 zombies out there. Some of them armed. For a moment, he considered killing them all in one shot with his elemental control. He could, and rather easily too, but he decided not to. He still had a few hours of free time left, and it was that he would much rather spend grinding rather than waiting around for his MP to regenerate from a massive Remomancy attack.

'Guess I'll have to do this the old fashioned way then,' he decided.

Another thunderous crack ripped through the forest.

Ignoring it and smiling like a maniac, Harry lit a fist on fire and punched the nearest zombie in the face with his full strength, snapping its neck backward and setting its head on fire. One down, 27 to go.

Taking a quick look around to judge the numbers around him, he ran towards the least concentrated area and jumped, delivering a flaming kick to another one's gut, setting it on fire and sending the flaming zombie stumbling back towards its friends. Any other zombie that came in contact with it caught fire as well, thinning the horde significantly.

"Twenty"

He turned and saw a small group of zombies coming too close for comfort. Sending a blast of wind to push most them back, he then parried the incoming armed zombie's sword with a push to the flat side of the blade and placed a hand on its stomach, blasting a hole in its midsection. He then let rip a small wave of fire at the remaining members of the group, deciding for once and all to screw the saving mana plan. He was having _fun_.

"Fourteen"

An idea struck Harry. He still had the Muggle weapons from the time he had raided Grunnings's little meeting. Opening his inventory, he chucked the zombie's sword in and grabbed an impact grenade. Pulling out the pin, he lobbed it straight towards the most crowded group of the undead.

BOOM!

'Shit!' he thought instantly. The trees had caught fire from the explosion. This was not good. Harry called for the underground water with his mana and sent a concentrated jet towards the trees, extinguishing the fire and destroying most of the remaining zombies, updating his zombie counter with every kill.

"One"

Harry paused for a second, and then sidestepped the sword swing that came from behind him. In one smooth motion, Harry swung around, pulled out a shotgun from his inventory and aimed and pulled the trigger.

"Zero"

The zombie's head flew off in many pieces and Harry slammed to the ground onto his butt from the recoil of the shotgun.

"Ow!"

Rubbing is bum, Harry decided that he would shelve the idea of using guns until he'd outgrown his skinny frame, no matter how cool he thought it would look.

Getting to his feet, Harry prepared himself. His mana reserves were running a bit lower than he wanted them to, his hands and knees were bruised, and there was a cut on his arm where a sword had glanced him. To make things even worse, the massive explosion was sure to have alerted every hostile in the area. Harry cursed his stupidity and quickly ran to the edge of the clearing and shimmied up a tree.

He started to wait, letting his mana regeneration get his magic back to top form and downed a few pancakes in an attempt to fill his HP back up. The more dangerous enemies were sure to come soon, and he'd have to take them out from the trees above. Hand to hand was no longer a viable option.

Sure enough, they came. And it wasn't any zombie this time. Oh no sir it was not.

At first, Harry heard a low grunting and the shuffling footfalls of huge feet. From under the trees on the right side, something huge was moving toward him. Harry shrank into the shadows and watched as it emerged into a patch of moonlight.

It was a grotesque sight.

Twelve feet tall, its skin was a dull, granite gray, its great lumpy body like a boulder with its small bald head perched on top like a coconut. It had short legs thick as tree trunks with flat, horny feet. The smell coming from it was incredibly horrible. It was holding a huge wooden club, which dragged along the floor because its arms were so long.

"Observe"

 **SPECIAL ENEMY DETECTED!**

 **Troll**

 **Lv-12**

 **HP:800/800**

 **MP:50/50**

 **Str-60**

 **Vit-12**

 **Dex-1**

 **Int-2**

 **Wis-1**

 **Luc-0**

 **A vicious forest troll that wants to kill anything in its way. One of the only creatures known to thrive with Undead Creatures, it is incredibly resistant to magic, has tough skin and incredible strength but is very dumb. He has mommy issues since she tried to eat him when he was born.**

 **Kill to get- 75 Exp**

'Thrives with Undead Creatures' didn't really explain how a creature that was technically 'living' existed in an undead dungeon. Worriedly, Harry eyed his new challenger when suddenly,

 **Bloodlust detected!**

Without a second's hesitation, his legs coiled like a frog and he sprang from his spot out into the open air of the clearing.

The troll in the middle of the clearing seemed to be expecting it as it swung its club with all its force, intending to 'baseball shoot' Harry's life right out of him. Harry used a quick burst of wind midair to get himself away from the swing of the club and slowed down enough to land off to the side of the clearing. Balancing himself, he turned around to see what had caused his bloodlust warning to trigger,

The tree he was standing on was merely a destroyed stump now, and a massive troll, larger and meaner looking than the one already in the clearing was standing on it with its massive club resting on its shoulder.

'There are two of them!' Harry realized, dread sinking down into his stomach. He had no idea what he was going to do now. Trolls were supposed to be very hard to kill.

Deftly dodging the barrage of rocks and swinging clubs that was being thrown his way, Harry desperately sent out his mana, searching for anything that could help him. Fire and earth were completely useless due to tough skin and magic resistance respectively. And he had yet to find a way to use wind to kill monsters.

All this and more was passing through his head when he heard a soft, rhythmic thudding echoing in his mind. Swinging under the club of the smaller troll and jumping backward, Harry suddenly realized what he was hearing.

Water.

Rushing through the veins of the troll, into and out of its beating heart. It was much in lesser amount than any human blood, but it was there.

And it was enough.

Harry tilted his head to smile at the new challengers. Now all he had to do was to distract them enough to get his mana into their bloodstreams. And he knew just the way to do it.

He pulled out his holly wand and leveled both of his wands, one in each hand, right above the center of the clearing. Hoping that the description was right about them being dumb, he incanted, " _Periculum_ "

A massive burst of red sparks shot skyward from his wands and settled above the clearing, floating. The trolls couldn't take their eyes off of the cloud of sparks and slowly raised their hands and started gurgling at it. It was working! Harry sent out his mana and commanded their blood to answer his call.

It did. Knowing that these creatures were not very intelligent and were probably only attacking out of instinct, Harry decided to give them a quick and painless death. With a little bit of effort, Harry jostled around the blood near their hearts, causing it to clot. The blood flow to their hearts stopped and they suddenly gave a giant heave, fell down and dissolved into golden dust.

Harry let go of his control and then looked at his mana;

 **Mana: 37/250**

He really needed to improve the size of his mana pool, and that was only possible by getting much more Int points. Turning around to look at the troll foot he got as the loot, he grimaced and decided to not take it.

Sometimes, the rewards were just a little bit shit.

Harry turned and saw around twenty zombies coming at him. With a grin, he turned into the forest and he quickly ran deep inside. The zombies followed him, extremely slow and no real match for Harry's speed.

Harry smiled as he got a brilliant idea. He focused an air current under his feet and boosted himself upwards, grabbing onto a branch and swinging himself onto the tree. Then, he waited. His original sniping idea hadn't worked with the troll, but it was sure to work with these zombies.

Zombies were quickly picked out in ones and twos as Harry used his earth control to drive spikes into the zombies and take them down.

Over the next hour Harry hit small groups of zombies across the forest, slowly boosting up his stats, and after he was done with the final group of zombies, he walked out of the forest near the ID Hagrid's hut, extremely tired. He took out some meat and ate it, filling up his energy. Harry then moved to enter back into the forest for a bit more grinding when suddenly he heard the thunderous crack echo through the forest once again.

It was much closer now.

"What _is_ this?" Harry wondered as he started following the sound. He'd been hearing these cracks since he'd entered the ID and he was starting to get very curious about what was causing them.

Harry ducked through the underbrush as he looked for the source. He'd just reached the clearing near the Black Lake, the one that was a favorite for students that wanted to indulge in activities of the more lascivious kind.

The sight that greeted him was a…strange one, to say the least. In the center of the clearing stood a _huge_ horde of zombies.

No.

Horde was the wrong word, the appropriate term was an army. For they were exactly that. Together as one, they slammed their feet into the ground, all together, once again generating the massive crack of sound that had led Harry here.

Harry was slightly relieved. He could take zombies. At least it wasn't a dragon or something. He pulled out his wand and readied an _Incendio_ spell, waiting for them to attack.

But they weren't poised to attack him, no. Instead, they were facing inwards. Harry watched as all the zombies crawled onto and over each other, working as if they were one single sentient organism, climbing and riding each other as they slowly fused into one giant monster that stood at over 30 feet tall, tall as the length of the longest Hogwarts greenhouse. With fear starting to set in, Harry cast observe.

 **Legion Zombie,**

 **Lv-34**

 **HP:15200/15200**

 **MP: 1200/1200**

 **Str- 82**

 **Vit- 30**

 **Dex-8**

 **Int-4**

 **Wis-2**

 **Luc-0**

 **An assembly of zombies that come out when a large amount of zombies are killed. It has insane strength and stamina but is slow. Some say that is if you kill enough of these Legion Zombies there is an even higher level of enemies of face.**

 **Kill to get- 5000 Exp**.

Harry knew that he didn't really stand a chance against this thing. His MP bar was full now, but he still needed more mana to even begin to fight this thing. There was only one thing left to do.

So Harry turned and ran.

As long as he was inside Hogwarts wards, his most powerful weapon, the Wardstone Perk, was entirely useless. The only way to win, was to get out of the wards. And so, he kept running on and on, with the giant zombie lumbering closer and closer behind him, crushing trees and rocks under its feet, until he felt a sinking pressure fall upon him, judging him before letting him through.

With his fingers crossed, Harry activated his perk.

 **Ping!**

 **Wardstone perk activated!**

 **Grants +1000 HP and +1000 MP when activated it at the cost of -25 MP per minute. All wounds are healed. All ailments cured. +20 Str,+20 Vit, +20 Dex.**

'Yes!'

Harry readied himself and waited until the Legion zombie was right on top of him. The second the zombie put a foot out of the Hogwarts ward line, Harry pulled his hands upwards and pooled massive amounts of his mana in his hands and concentrating with all his will, he yelled, "RUNIC BURST!"

It was his first time using this particular attack, which was why it took him by surprise.

Dozens of rune-inscribed discs of light appeared all around the Legion Zombie and from within themselves, let loose a barrage of their respective spells onto the massive zombie orgy fest. Harry recognized multiple _Incendios_ , _Flipendos_ , _Lapifies_ and _Mucus ad Nauseums_ in the multicolored blasts of the attacks. The spells did an almost devastating amount of physical damage on the zombie. The Flipendos put it off balance and Lapifies rigidified parts of its exterior making it even slower. The Incendios were the most devastating as they burnt off Legion's foot at its knee, absolutely destroying its mobility. The Legion zombie toppled over onto the ground.

Harry lowered his arms and started to pant. The spell was powerful sure, but it used up mana to its fullest, and it had taken a lot out of him. He pulled up his stat screen and looked at his mana.

 **Mana: 35/1250**

Harry had used all his mana in the last attack. It was going to take him almost 10 minutes to get it back up to full again, but Harry didn't know whether he had that much time left. He then turned to the Legion's HP.

 **HP:12260/15200**

Harry stumbled and almost fell down in shock. All that for nothing? The creature's HP was still at a solid 80% of its total. Harry's attack barely managed to take out 20% of its total HP!

The Legion tried to stand up on one leg, only to immediately fall down causing the ground to rumble on the impact. At least it was slower now, Harry thought with relief. He moved back away from the reach of the Legion. If maybe he kept out of its reach for a long enough time, time enough for his Mana to fill up again, then he could end this quickly.

For the next ten minutes, Harry kept moving back and dodging, again and again, every time the Legion tried to reach for him, the fact that he was incredibly slow and had only one leg helped a lot. Eventually, Harry's mana was charged up fully again. Quickly hatching an idea for a new attack, Harry stood in the middle of a stream that flowed through the forest and he raised his hands again, this time for an elemental attack. This time, Harry aimed for the Legion's head.

Several water spikes rose out of the water and skewered the gigantic creature's head. And then Harry let rip a massive blast of fire at the head, making the water evaporate into scalding steam and burning off most of the Legion's head.

 **Critical strike! Steam Scald attack- 2940 x 300% times more = 8820 Attack!**

Harry smiled as he lowered his arms yet again. Apparently, the Game liked to name his combo attacks. Harry quickly observed its health bar. Thankfully, this critical attack had done damage much more substantial than the attack before.

 **HP: 3440/15200**

All he now had to do was wait.

As Harry waited for his mana to charge up, he looked around and realized he was nearly at the Quidditch pitch. He'd covered quite a distance dodging the Legion zombie.

With yet another attack idea in mind, he lifted one hand up and focused his mana into the air around the troll. A massive burst of swirling wind started at the Legion's feet. Harry winced. Controlling air was hard for him…even with his high mana regeneration rate he wouldn't be able to handle this for much longer!

With his burst of mana, he let loose a wave of fire at the swirling wind vortex.

The flames quickly grew and fed upon the air of the vortex of wind as they fed upon the oxygen and the Legion's flesh and turned into a massive fire tornado that started burning off the Legion, who was stuck inside it due to being entirely immobilized.

 **Critical strike! Fire Tornado- 2520 x 300% times more = 7560 Attack!**

The Legion zombie didn't stand a chance. It slowly began to dissolve into dust, leaving an exhausted Harry behind. Heaving for breath, he dropped to the floor, every limb bursting with exhaustion.

Ping!

 **You gained a new title, you insane twat!**

 **Apprentice Zombie killer- 30% more attack and defense when dealing with the undead. +5 to all stats when dealing with the undead.**

Ping!

 **You gained a total of 14,875 Exp!**

Ping!

 **You leveled up!**

 **Harry Potter**

 **Health-525/525**

 **Mana-300/300**

 **The Gamer**

 **Title-The Boy who Lived**

 **(+20 Str,+20 Vit, +20 Dex, while in Home Turf)**

 **Level-10 Exp-39815/76800**

 **Race-wizard**

 **STR-12**

 **VIT-10(+4)=14**

 **DEX-12(+4)=16**

 **INT-16**

 **WIS-14**

 **LUC-19**

 **POINTS-20**

 **MONEY- 1875** £ **/ 2042G 182S 25K**

 **Harry Potter is a wizard, the son of Lily Potter and James Potter. He has bad eyesight making it difficult for him to do well in class. His magic has gotten him trouble over the years in various schools. Strange things seem to happen around him. Harry is unaware of who he is, and wishes to find meaning in his life. Harry loves his mother, and hates the Dursleys.**

 **Status- wizard, giving Harry +4 VIT, +4 DEX and the ability to control magic, talk to snakes, control his appearance and look cool.**

Harry smiled at the larger mana pool he now had and swiped the box away. His new title was also sure to be useful later when he would come here to grind here again. Harry pushed himself back onto his feet and limped over to where the Legion zombie had dissolved and looked at what he got as loot. There were three things there for him.

 **Wiggenwald Potion, low-level x 3**

 **Restores 45% of HP**

 **restores 30% of MP**

 **Essence of Murtlap, High level**

 **Restores subject's health by a rate of 10% a minute.**

Harry quickly stored the potions and the little jar away and picked up the skill book.

 **Skill book: Area Sense**

 **Ping!**

 **You have obtained the skill book: Area Sense**

 **Would you like to learn?**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry pressed yes immediately and then the book burst into flames, filling Harry's head with the knowledge to use this brand new skill.

 **Ping!**

 **You have obtained the skill, Area Sense!**

 **Area Sense, Lv-1 (0%)**

 **Allows the user to get a sense of the area around him/her. A more permanent version of the Supersensory Charm. The higher the level the more information is provided.**

 **Effective until 20 feet.**

Harry then closed the box and intoned, "ID escape." The alternate dimension shattered around him, and Harry found himself back in the real world. The sound of animals wandering around filled the forest air and the birds took the blue sky. Harry quickly put the yew wand into his inventory, pocketed his own one and stored everything else in his inventory.

For a moment he looked at the sky, reveling in the peace until he realized that the sun was right overhead. It was noon.

'Oh shit! The flying class!' he suddenly remembered and took off running towards the Quidditch pitch.

* * *

Harry had made it just in time to blend in with all the other boys of the first year and make his way to the center of the Quidditch pitch where Rolanda Hooch, the flying instructor stood with a bunch of brooms lying in rows. The girls would be learning to fly separately. Apparently, for some reason, girls didn't want to learn how to fly on broomsticks in the presence of boys.

Upskirt issues, Terry had called them.

The ground was nice and dry…and hard. Harry briefly paused to consider the numerous perils of flying on a broom of all things. It sounded awesome at first, but now, being only minutes away from it, the stupidity of the whole thing was starting to set it.

Why a broom?! He could do with a plank or even a carpet, but a broom?! That just seemed to be asking for trouble.

Harry paused to take a deep breath.

It was alright, he told himself. He'd flown before using his powers, sort of, and he had no fears of height. It was just that he had problems trusting those rickety looking brooms as much as his own powers.

"Well, what are you all waiting for?" Hooch barked, pulling Harry out of his reverie, "Everyone, stand by a broomstick. Come on, hurry up."

Harry glanced down at his broom. It was old and some of the twigs stuck out at odd angles.

"Stick out your right hand over the broom, or left hand if you're left-handed," called Madam Hooch. "And say, UP!"

"UP!" everyone shouted. The broomstick leaped eagerly into Harry's hand. That put him right at the front of the class. Apparently, saying "UP!" was a lot more difficult than it looked, because most of the broomsticks were still rolling around on the ground, or trying to inch away from their riders, as if terrified by the sheer realization that they'd soon be stuck between the legs of pre-pubescent boys.

'Poor brooms.' Harry thought amusedly.

Terry Boot's broom had simply rolled over on the ground, and Neville's hadn't moved at all. Harry wasn't surprised. There was a quiver in Neville's voice that said only too clearly that he wanted to keep his feet on the ground. Madam Hooch then showed them how to mount their brooms without sliding off the end, and walked up and down the rows correcting their grips.

After she was done, she surveyed the field of boys and nodded.

"Now, when I blow my whistle, you kick off from the ground, hard. Keep your brooms steady, rise a few feet, and then come straight back down by leaning forwards slightly. On my whistle-three-two-"

Harry had a bad feeling about this.

Just as he had thought that, one of the brooms shot skyward, accompanied by a boy's screams of horror. The boy was spinning at an awful rate as he ascended, they only got glimpses of his white face. With a sinking feeling in his gut, Harry realized who it was.

It was Neville!

"Come back, boy!" shouted Madam Hooch.

Harry saw his scared white face look down at the ground falling away and saw him gasp, slipping sideways…and he was thrown off the broom!

"NO!" Harry yelled, throwing his mana out in a desperate effort to bend the air around the boy to keep him from falling, but it was too far too little.

Neville plummeted to the ground fast.

Suddenly, almost as if of its own volition, Gamer's Mind snapped onto Harry's mind, sending as much mana as possible outwards into the area on the ground Neville was falling towards, creating a massive updraft of wind. It wasn't much use in stopping his fall, but Neville slowed down.

It wasn't much, but it saved his life.

WHAM! - a thud and a nasty crack echoed across the pitch. Neville lay face-down on the grass in a heap. His broom was still rising higher and higher and started to drift lazily toward the forbidden forest and out of sight.

Harry blinked, shaking off the loud buzz caused by Gamer's Mind taking over so fast. Dropping his broom, he took off as fast as he could towards the fallen boy, discreetly casting observe.

 **Neville Longbottom**

 **Lv-3**

 **HP-60/150**

 **MP-100/100**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-3**

 **Vit-5**

 **Dex-4**

 **Int-6**

 **Wis-5**

 **Luc-1**

 **Neville Franklin Longbottom is a pureblood son of House Longbottom and the son of the now brain dead Frank and Alice Longbottom. He grew up with his Grandmother and Uncle until, at age eleven, he was accepted into Hogwarts. He possesses a good heart and is a gifted herbologist.**

 **He is unconscious.**

The HP wasn't too badly decreased, which was a huge relief.

Reaching the downed boy, Harry positioned his inventory subtly into his pocket to pull out a Wiggenwald healing potion. None of his classmates or his teachers saw him tip the potion into Neville's unconscious mouth since they were still running towards them. So, Harry pretended to be checking his pulse, before rising to his feet to reassure the worried Gryffindor boys that Neville was alive.

Madam Hooch was bending over Neville, her face as white as his. Harry heard a few groans. Apparently, the potion had done its job, and Neville was now conscious.

"Broken wrist," Harry heard Hooch mutter, "Come on, boy - it's all right, up you get."

She turned to the rest of the class.

"No one is to move while I take this boy to the hospital wing! You leave those brooms where they are or you'll be out of Hogwarts before you can say 'Quidditch.' Come on, dear."

Neville, his face tear-streaked, clutching his wrist, hobbled off with Madam Hooch, who had her arm around him. When they were out of earshot, one of the Slytherins started giggling. That set off the others. Gritting his teeth, Harry swung around to see who it was. It was Malfoy who had burst into laughter.

"Did you see his face, the great lump?"

"Shut up, you slimy Slytherins." snapped Seamus Finnigan. The Gryffindor first years looked as if they were about to launch into a fist fight.

"Look!" said Malfoy, ignoring the Gryffindors as he darted forwards and snatched something out of the grass. "It's that stupid thing Longbottom's gran sent him."

A Remembrall glittered in the sun as he held it up. Harry remembered Neville showing it to him while coming to the pitch.

"Give that here, Malfoy," said Ron Weasley quietly, and everyone stopped talking to watch. Malfoy smiled nastily. Harry frowned. He wanted to help the Malfoy heir, but he wasn't making it easy to like him.

"I think I'll leave it somewhere for Longbottom to find," he said, "How about...up a tree?"

Deciding that this was getting a bit too much, Harry intervened, "Malfoy, can I talk with you for a second. Privately?"

That brought Malfoy to an immediate and stuttering halt. Shooting a dirty look at the Weasley, he walked over to Harry before saying in a low tone, "If you're going to tell me to give this back to Longbottom then you-"

Harry cut him off.

"I have no intention of _telling_ you to do anything Heir Malfoy. I intend to simply inform you what is going to happen if you choose to bully Heir Longbottom and flaunt the school rules in such a public manner. With these many students as a witness, not even your father will be able to prevent your removal from this school. Thievery is grounds for expulsion after all. So, if you choose to continue what you were doing, not only will you be disgracing the name of the House of Malfoy, but you will also be adversely affecting your own life. I say this not as a warning, but as advice to a potential ally," Harry said with the practiced clipped tone he'd learned from years of living with Aunt Petunia.

Malfoy was hesitating. Harry almost had him.

"If you have any worries of harming your reputation, don't worry. Just give the artifact to me and I will pass it on to Heir Longbottom," Harry said in a gentler tone.

With the final assurance of his reputation remaining safe, the situation was quickly resolved.

Draco gave the Remembrall to him and went off towards the Slytherins to calm them down. Later on the way back to the castle, Harry met a Gryffindor to hand over the Remembrall to give to Neville. On a whim, he observed the guy as he took the Remembrall.

 **Dean Thomas**

 **Lv-4**

 **HP-200/200**

 **MP-125/125**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-4**

 **Vit-5**

 **Dex-5**

 **Int-7**

 **Wis-6**

 **Luc-5**

 **Dean Thomas is a half-blood son of Jonathon Wright and Marie Corsaw. He grew up with his mother and stepfather until, at age eleven, he was accepted into Hogwarts. He possesses a good heart and loves his stepsisters.**

"Johnathon Wright," Harry muttered as he saw the werewolf's name on the description.

This was his son! He'd found him!

* * *

The Astronomy classroom was a tower with the best view of the night sky, a massive model of the planets rotating inside the classroom and a roof that opened up to reveal the beautiful night sky. Harry had tried to listen to the lesson, but it mostly involved memorizing charts and planets. Although Professor Sinistra promised that the subject would get pretty interesting by the next class, he couldn't help but feel grossly underwhelmed. So, Harry quickly memorized the planets and charts with his Gamer's Mind and sat through most of the class thinking about the letter with yellowing edges that lay in his inventory.

That night, after the extraordinarily long and overstretched Astronomy class, Harry had something to ask Hedwig when she came back through the windows into the dorms after everyone else had fallen asleep.

"Girl, can you flame this letter to a guy in the Gryffindor dorms? I'd really like this to not be seen getting delivered," Harry asked, explaining his problem and showing the white phoenix the letter from John the werewolf.

The phoenix looked at the letter before chirping a dejected negative.

Harry sighed.

Of course she couldn't. Harry had specifically forbidden her from exploring Hogwarts on her own. He'd been worried about what'd happen if she was caught. So she'd been off all week exploring places all outside Hogwarts. That had been necessary, but now it was proving to be very inconvenient.

Both boy and bird settled down, thinking about how to tackle the problem. After a few minutes of deliberation, Hedwig suddenly let out an excited little chirp and promptly took off with a flap of her wings, diving out the window and into the night sky outside.

Harry stared at the window, wondering what had happened when suddenly she flew right back in. And she was not alone. Behind her flew in a red feathered golden tailed phoenix. The two phoenixes played around in the air for a minute before alighting back onto Harry's bed.

There was a moment of awkward silence.

Harry turned from the red-plumed phoenix back to his own white one, who was looking at him confused. A strange little itch was starting to build up in his gut.

"Trrrwwweeeeee?" Hedwig trilled, confused.

"Hedwig," Harry muttered, rubbing the bridge of his nose, "I swear to you that if this is some sort of boyfriend that you've picked up, we are going to be having some serious words-"

" _I'm afraid that is not even close to the truth Mr. Potter._ "

Harry looked up and stared at the red flaming bird. The voice had no doubt come from it, but its mouth…beak...it hadn't even moved. There had to be some sort of Mind Arts involved.

"What in the- wait a minute, did you just speak?"

" _Indeed, Mr. Potter. And while I am glad to see young Hedwig has the protection of such a dedicated guardian, she will not be needing said protection from myself. I am but a humble friend of hers. And to answer your unasked question, yes. Hedwig will be able to speak to you. It will take her some more time to fully learn your language. Perhaps by next autumn, if she pays attention._ "

"Well," Harry muttered apologetically, "I suppose I…shouldn't have jumped to conclusions."

"Trrreeewweeeeee!" Hedwig pecked him right on his head.

"OW! Calm down you crazy bird! Fine! Sorry! Sorry, what's your name again-Fawkes? I'm sorry Fawkes!"

" _It's quite fine Mr. Potter. You two do remind me quite a bit of Albus and me in our younger days. Always bickering. Always overprotective. Now, the young one said you wished a letter delivered anonymously. If that is so, then I assure you that there is no bird that knows this castle as well as myself._ " Fawkes puffed up his chest. Clearly, he was quite proud of the fact.

"Er…yes. Do you know where Dean Thomas is? I need this delivered to him. Anonymously if possible."

" _Dean Thomas eh? Gryffindor, if I remember correctly. Well, no fears sir! The tower of Gryffindor is a place I'm well acquainted with. And Hedwig did request that I keep this a secret from my human partner as well. I assure you that I shall be quite discreet._ "

Harry nodded and held out the letter for Fawkes to take. The phoenix grabbed the yellowing letter from Harry's hands and flamed away.

"Wait a second. Did he say, Albus? As in Albus _Dumbledore_?" Harry asked, staring at the spot from which the bird had disappeared. Receiving no reply from his companion, he turned around to face the furious bird who was staring at her shiny sharp claws with a terrifying glint in her eyes.

The only reason that night the entire dorm didn't wake up due to the fierce fighting between the two friends was because of the silencing curtains on the beds.

* * *

 **Heyo. Fixed up and changed a few of the scenes here. Let me know what you thought of the slightly edited up and improved class scenes, or even the fight scenes? I'm loving getting back into writing and I've got so many ideas going forward.**


	11. Book-I:Adventures Worth A Night

Chapter 10:

Saturday had been an entirely different day for Harry than for Headmaster Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore.

As the young hero had been off slaying a massive legion zombie in an Instant Dungeon dimension, the Headmaster had been running around in his office in a way that strongly resembled a headless chicken.

Why?

Half an hour ago the Headmaster had been notified by the protective wards of the school that a student was in 'mortal danger.' Such a thing was nothing new in the halls of Hogwarts since students that were learning magic tended to be extremely destructive; blowing up cauldrons being one of the most common examples; even if it was rarely mortally dangerous.

However, something that was worsening the situation was the addition of the Philosopher's Stone to the third-floor corridor and the public announcement to forbid students from entering it. It had the exact opposite effect and had ended in students almost regularly stumbling upon the giant three-headed dog, which meant that the wards hit an alarm almost every single day.

When they did, standard and boring procedure ensued - check the location using portraits, armors and house elves, check if there's a presence of professor nearby, ask the professor to check on the incident and if there are no professors in the immediate vicinity, ask any professor to visit location in a specific time, usually the second after location check was made - there was a reason Hogwarts teachers were permitted limited use of a time turner after all. A misbehaving spell or potion could kill students a bit too fast to react without one.

The end result usually left the students safe, if a bit scolded and damaged, but otherwise alive with the vigilant professors saving the day. The standard and boring procedure was one that never failed.

But Saturday was different.

As he was about to go send off a portrait to notify nearby professors and put on one of his gloomier robes; the blue one that had ballerinas dancing all over around; he suddenly noticed the smell of something burning. Looking around, he realized what it was with a jolt of panic. He hurriedly walked over to the giant assortment of silver whirring instruments on his desk and picked up the small table-clock that had started emitting sparks.

Its single dial, that had Harry Potter's face on it, was on 'mortal peril' and was trembling, as if mortal peril didn't quite capture the severity of the danger Harry Potter was in.

So he immediately activated another contraption that showed Harry's rough position within the castle. This contraption gave a giant heave and melted, almost as if it couldn't decide whether Harry was inside the castle or not. Albus Dumbledore was panicking now. There was no reasonable explanation that he could come up with for something like that. He was wary and was genuinely becoming worried. Harry Potter was in an unknown location and in direct danger to his life.

Dumbledore's brain promptly shut down for a second only to reboot in a few seconds and burst up with dozens of locating, messaging and guiding spells. He tried each and every one of them-he even tried to send his phoenix Fawkes to help.

Nothing worked, and for the first time in decades, Dumbledore was not sure what to do. He went for the closest device only to stop, turn and go for a supposedly better solution, only to rethink, stop, make a step, run, stop again and turn…his thought process was much too complex to match a chicken, but his behavior so strongly resembled one that any outsider who saw him would instantly make the comparison.

And then suddenly it stopped.

The clock stopped sparking and moved out of 'mortal peril' to 'flying class' and the melted device somehow completely fixed itself and pointed in the direction of the Quidditch pitch.

Thoroughly puzzled, he cast the strongest disillusionment he knew and promptly apparated onto the Quidditch pitch stands, where a young boy had somehow ended up with an out of control broom and was lying still on the ground. He was about to go down and help, since he knew the boy could be permanently disabled if not treated quickly, when he noticed that Harry Potter of all people was rushing towards the boy.

Dumbledore clearly saw him pull out a potion, the glowing green of which he easily identified as a Wiggenwald healing potion, and tip it into the boy's mouth.

Knowing that the boy would survive and that Harry Potter was safe, he apparated back to his office with questions revolving through his mind.

What was happening? Why did the contraptions go off? Where did Harry get the healing potion?

One thing was clear. Harry was not possessed. Lord Voldemort would have let the Longbottom boy die instantly without a single thought. So was he being paranoid? Was Harry just a boy from violent home conditions? He spent a long time pondering over these questions.

It was midnight when the cry of a phoenix filled the school grounds and distracted him from his ponderings. Dumbledore's trained ears recognized it as the cry of a much younger one than his millennium old companion.

Fawkes perked up and soared out of the open window.

'A friend of his perhaps?' Dumbledore thought as he rose and went over to the window, where his eyebrows climbed up his wizened forehead as he watched Fawkes and a pure white phoenix fly straight into the window of the Ravenclaw tower that he knew to be the nearest to Harry Potter.

Turning around, he quickly cast a Patronus with a flick of his wand and spoke a message to it.

"Elphias, I regret to intrude my friend but I have to ask you to send me the Mirror of Erised. I will answer any of your questions when I come over to pick it up. Say hello to little Emily from me."

Sending the Patronus away, he went on to write the last of the letters to his teachers, each detailing the final series of traps to be set for the Philosopher's stone.

Although he was apprehensive about Quirinus's trolls, he felt sure that the alerting charms on them would allow him to quickly save Harry if he couldn't handle that part of the traps. Besides, Quirinus had assured him that they were the most docile trolls he had ever seen, and Dumbledore had no reason to doubt his old friend and employee.

The Philosopher's stone had always been meant to be a test for Harry Potter's strength of magic and knowledge, but the Mirror would add a necessary test for his character as well. Dropping into his Occlumency barriers, Dumbledore started planning out when and where he would drop the clues for Harry to get him interested in protecting the stone.

* * *

Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of the next week passed without any real excitement.

Most of the class was still stuck with transfiguring needles and matchsticks back and forth, so Harry's transfiguration skill hadn't leveled up anymore. Neither had his Charms skill. Due to excessive amounts of schoolwork and research, he had relegated all the grinding and training to weekends. He _had_ learned many new spells though and considered that a good flip side to all this.

Thursday night brought with itself some interest and relief from the boring rhythm that Harry had fallen into.

Astronomy was famous for being one of the most mediocre classes in all of Hogwarts. Not too good and not too bad. Rarely anything interesting ever happened. Thus, Harry was quite surprised when in his second class, instead of just Professor Sinistra standing on the podium, there was another witch in black robes standing with her. And what's more, all first-year students from all houses were there, waiting impatiently for whatever big announcement they had all been gathered for.

Intrigued, he sat down near the front and looked forth with interest.

After the entire class settled down and the buzz of curious murmuring ceased, Professor Sinistra spoke, "Welcome, welcome. You spent most of your first class here memorizing and learning the basics of the Astronomy class. Incredibly boring, I know, I know."

Some of the students chuckled, clearly agreeing.

"But I'm afraid it was necessary. For any of you to understand how today's class could impact your magical education, you needed to be well versed in the basics. I'll let Professor Vector take it from here."

The witch in black robes stepped up to speak, "All of you here have been aware of the magical world for at least a month now. In this time, you have done your research and seen the various cultures and traditions of the wizarding world. The reason why you were taught the basics of Astronomy in such a hurried manner is that today, your second Astronomy class, is scheduled to be your first Ministry approved W.O.M.B.A.T test."

A nervous chattering filled the entire class. The chalk rose from the teacher's desk without any volition and started writing.

 ** _Wizards' Ordinary Magic and Basic Aptitude Test._**

A test; a surprise test; by the Ministry! While Harry knew that while he was smarter than most people in the room, even he couldn't help but feel a bit nervous about this test.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Score the highest in the WOMBAT!**

 **Rewards,**

 **1000 exp**

 **25 house points**

 **Failure,**

 **Loss of reputation in Ravenclaw**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry pressed YES.

"Now fear not," Professor Sinistra assured the nervous students, "The test will only ask questions about the basic knowledge of the Wizarding world and the very basics of the subjects you have covered at Hogwarts in the past two weeks. Think hard before answering and do not guess your answer. A wrong answer will have a negative marking of 1 mark, a right one will get you 4 marks and an unanswered question will get you none. Do. Not. Cheat. This exam will affect your end of the year grade, so be careful."

"And as an added incentive, since this exam is being conducted much earlier than usual this year, the highest three scorers will earn 25 points each for their house." Professor Vector added with a smirk, "You have five minutes to prepare yourself, you will be provided with quills and answer sheets so please put all your belongings in your bags."

There was a shuffle as students rushed to put everything away. Professor Vector waved a wand and all the students' bags flew and piled onto Professor Sinistra's desk. Another wave and any bits of paper or anything in the students' pockets came flying out. They were pretty strict on the no cheating policy.

A final wave and the exam papers appeared on the students' desks.

"Good Luck. There are 15 questions and 30 minutes. Begin."

Harry quickly flipped to the first question.

 ** _Part One - Magical Law_**

 ** _Which Ministry of Magic department(s) and/or committee(s) would you contact to resolve each of the following dilemmas? (Questions 1-3)_**

 ** _1\. Your neighbour is concealing a stash of flying carpets, some of which he is allowing to fly loose around his back garden._**

This one Harry knew. He quickly wrote down 'Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office'.

 ** _2\. Your friend C possesses a Muggle Penny Farthing (old bicycle) that has been enchanted to skim an inch above the ground, achieving speeds of over 100mph. C did not personally enchant the Penny Farthing, never rides it and merely wishes to keep it 'for sentimental reasons' as it was her grandmother's. Do you report her?_**

"The Obliviator people might get involved if a Muggle sees them, but if C isn't going to ride it and only wants to keep it for sentiment, no Muggles will probably see it," Harry muttered before writing down no. There was a chance that this could be a wrong answer, but he had to follow his gut.

The next one was a multiple choice.

 ** _3\. Which of the following should be most SEVERELY punished by the Wizengamot?_**

 ** _a. The injury of three Muggles due to a poorly performed Forgetfulness Charm_**

 ** _b. The death of a chicken due to a poorly aimed Bat-Bogey Hex_**

 ** _c. The use of the Cruciatus Curse on a shark about to attack a Muggle_**

 ** _d. The use of the Imperius Curse on a Muggle mugger_**

Harry promptly dismissed (a) and (b). The others involved Unforgivables. Unsure of the comparison between cursing an animal and cursing in self-defense, Harry guessed (d) and moved on to the next one.

 ** _4\. Which of the following does NOT require a Ministry of Magic license?_**

 ** _a. Crup ownership_**

 ** _b. Sale of magical artifacts_**

 ** _c. House-elf ownership_**

 ** _d. Apparition_**

Harry knew Apparition did and rationalized that there must be some sort of trade license in the wizarding world. Tossing a mental coin between (a) and (c), he chose (c).

 ** _5\. Which of the following wizarding laws, in your view, stands in most urgent need of change?_**

 ** _a. The detection of underage magic in all-magic households (currently impossible)_**

 ** _b. The ban on goblin possession of wands (ought to be lifted)_**

 ** _c. The re-classification of centaurs and merpeople (ought to take their views into account)_**

 ** _d. The guidelines on house-elf welfare (need to be enforced)_**

 ** _e. Definitions of 'Muggle-baiting' (needs to be made less stringent)_**

'Oh.'

Harry suddenly realized what this was.

The ministry diplomats (Harry was willing to bet that Malfoy Sr. was one) were using these tests to vet upcoming young aspiring politicians and their views. Furthermore, they knew Harry Potter was going to be giving the test, so they wanted to know what he thought about the Wizarding world and how aware he was of it. They wanted information on him so that they would know what buttons to push when he'd enter the political arena.

Harry could bet that his answer to this question was going to be read at the ministry more times and by more people than any other.

"Smart, but about as subtle as a bull in a china shop," Harry muttered and put in the answer they'd expect an eleven years old to put. Option (a) was bubbled.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Mislead the people at the Ministry who think they can spy on you! The NERVE of those people!**

 **Rewards,**

 **1000 exp**

 **Failure,**

 **Death**

 **WARNING: This quest's acceptance renders Quest: 'Score high in the WOMBAT' null and void.**

 **YES/NO?**

That was a yes for sure.

After that Harry carefully nitpicked his answers, doing everything to make it look like an answer sheet written by a ten-year-old muggleborn child who didn't know anything about the wizarding world. He did answer all the factual questions correctly though. He had to make sure not to sound _too_ childlike, so he made sure to match the Ravenclaw stereotype of memorizing everything.

When he was done, the answer sheet had all the factual questions correct and most of the 'insightful wizarding knowledge' questions entirely wrong. Any outsider who read it would only see it as the answers of a first year Ravenclaw, nothing special.

Answering 'the Kneazle is known to have the ability to detect suspicious or unsavory characters' at number 14 and 'Mercury' to an Astronomy question at number 15, he submitted the answer sheet, which rolled up, magically scored him at 47/60, and flew off to Professor Sinistra, who was collecting and writing down the scores against the student's names.

Just like that his first magical test was done.

Ping!

 **Quest Completed!**

 **Mislead the people at the Ministry who think they can spy on you! The NERVE of those people!**

 **Rewards,**

 **1000 exp**

And just as Harry was reading the message, Professor Sinistra looked up from where she was noting down the scores.

"25 points each to Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy and Terry Boot for the top three scores."

Harry smiled. This was going to be an interesting game. The Ministry had made a move, and Harry had countered and disguised his own attack as a feint. Now all that was left to be done was wait and watch.

* * *

Everything returned to normal; or at least what passed for normal at Hogwarts; after that interesting little class. On Friday after finishing up his work and leaving Hedwig to sleep on his bed, Harry left at midnight to go explore the castle.

He had spent a lot of time thinking of the Founder's clues and when he'd start working on it, but he hadn't had the time until this point.

"Oh well, no better time than right now," he told himself as he slipped into an empty ID and made his way over to the entrance hall. What better way to start than the still portraits of the Founders themselves that hung in the Entrance Hall? The magical processes of preserving a person's essence in a magical portrait hadn't been invented in their times, but the still-portraits hadn't been moved from the entrance hall ever since they'd been put there on the day of the establishment of the school. So if there was any clue to be found, it would be there.

He had slipped out of his ID and had just started scrutinizing the frame of the Ravenclaw portrait when the click-clack of boots filled the entrance hall. Believing it was some teacher or Filch, Harry slipped behind the statue of the one-eyed witch and kept an eye out for whoever was coming.

It wasn't any Professor, nor was it Filch. It was a black-robed figure, around whom the darkness and shadows seemed to coil together, almost as if writhing in agony. Harry stilled as he felt the figure's magic unravel and whip around him.

Whoever it was…it was dangerous.

Slowly and carefully, Harry peeked out of his hiding spot and cast Observe on the man.

 **Quirinus Quirrell**

 **Lv-?**

 **HP-?/?**

 **MP-?/?**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-?**

 **Vit-?**

 **Dex-?**

 **Int-?**

 **Wis-?**

 **Luc-?**

 **?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?**

'Quirrell? What is _he_ doing?' Harry thought, an uneasy feeling rapidly rising in his chest.

The hooded figure-Quirrell-glided swiftly down the front steps of the castle. Clearly not wanting to be seen, it walked as fast as possible toward the Forbidden Forest. Resolving to follow and find out, and definitely not wishing to be seen by someone who was clearly a very powerful wizard, Harry put on his wolf jacket and used a 'spying' technique he'd worked out the previous weekend.

He slipped into an empty ID, ran full speed down the stairs and by Hagrid's hut and climbed up a tree with some dense canopy. Then, he broke out of the ID. To the outside world, Harry might as well have just disappeared from one spot and reappeared at another. This inter-dimensional hopping allowed him an unprecedented amount of stealth.

Quirrell had reached the Forbidden Forest and had slowed down to drift along the forest floor, completely silent except for his cloak slithering over dead leaves nearby, pausing for a moment to look at his surroundings before continuing on his prowl once again.

It didn't take long for Harry to recognize what Quirrell was doing. He had done the same thing when he'd gone looking around the forest for zombies in the ID.

He was hunting.

Harry followed Quirrell in a similar manner for hours, Quirrell prowling along the dead leaves of the forest floor hunting for whatever he was hunting for, and Harry spying on him from top of one tree, only to use his ID to get to the next tree entirely undetected.

Ping!

 **A skill has leveled up due to sneaking around.**

 **Sneaking, Lv-10(1%)**

 **Allows you to sneak up on someone.**

 **55% chance of not getting caught.**

 **55% chance of critical strike.**

Harry waved away the message. It seemed like something was finally happening. Quirrell suddenly perked up and ran off in one direction. He was clearly chasing something. Something that Harry had not seen in his hurry to read his game window.

Activating his Sneaking skill, he started running amongst the trees, trying and failing to keep up. Somehow Quirrell was much faster than him, and whatever he was chasing was almost an invisible blur of silver.

Quickly thinking of an idea, Harry boosted off a branch and grabbing hold of another offshoot, swinging himself up high enough to see which route the hunter and the prey were taking.

Once he caught sight of the path, he slipped into an ID mid-air and focused on bursting his mana out of his feet. A jet stream of fire erupted out of his feet and propelled him forward at breakneck speeds towards the nearest clearing, one he was sure his targets were going to pass through. He reached it within seconds and broke out of his ID after catching himself on the branch of a nearby tree and swinging into a resting position on it.

The sight that he caught was disturbing, to say the least.

Somehow Quirrell had struck his much faster target down, probably with a curse since he didn't seem to have caught up with his fallen prey yet. The target lay in the middle of the clearing, letting out weak squeals of pain. Harry couldn't believe his eyes.

"Observe," he muttered quietly.

 **Unicorn (Status: Bleeding -10% hp per minute)**

 **Lv-20**

 **HP:300/5000**

 **MP:60/4000**

 **Str-25**

 **Vit-30**

 **Dex-60**

 **Int-18**

 **Wis-15**

 **Luc-16**

 **A female unicorn that has the ability to run fast at the expense of her innate magic. She can also sense the worthiness of a person by the very same magic. One of the most powerful and potent magical creatures out there, they are said to represent true beauty and purity.**

 **She is dying from the massive dark magic cut she's received on her side. She doesn't know Harry.**

It was a unicorn, and it was almost dead. Harry had never seen anything so beautiful and sad. Its long, slender legs were stuck out at odd angles where it had fallen and its mane was spread pearly-white on the dark leaves. A single beam of moonlight illuminated its flank, the rise and fall of which was the only indication to any outsider that the mare was even alive.

Harry was about to take one step towards it when a slithering sound made him freeze. A bush on the edge of the clearing quivered. Then, out of the shadows, the hooded figure that was Quirrell came crawling across the ground like some stalking beast.

'No,' Harry thought as he looked closer. He was trembling. Quirrell was entirely drained. He wasn't emulating a beast, he was too tired to stay on his feet.

Quirrell reached the unicorn and did something that almost made Harry gag. He lowered its head over the wound in the animal's side and began to drink its blood. A rage filled him as he saw the man defile such a pure creature. The unicorn's cries of pain only served to increase that rage.

Just like the night of Grunning's death, Harry's scar started burning, and something stirred in him...something strange and dark...

 _Hurt...Kill...Destroy...deserves it..._

For once, the Game concurred.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Save the unicorn!**

 **Rewards,**

 **+5 stat points**

 **5000 Exp**

 **?**

 **Failure,**

 **Death**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry slammed yes.

Pushing quite a bit of his mana through the tree and into the ground below him, he commanded it. It obediently rose without an iota of resistance, as if the forest itself supported his act of protective vengeance. A giant earthen fist shaped itself out of the rising earth and slammed into Quirrell's form, sending it flying across the clearing, where instead of fighting back, he struggled back to his feet and quickly scurried off. Harry paused, confused as he watched the clearly superior wizard retreat into the forest. The pain in his scar slowly faded away.

He dropped down from the tree and ran towards the unicorn, sliding to his knees next to the downed creature. Clamping down the Gamer's Mind on his panicking thoughts, he started taking stock of all the injuries.

Several cuts, bruises, broken limbs, magical burns, and the giant gaping wound in its flank.

Harry pulled out the bottle of Essence of Murtlap he had in stock and applied it to the edges of the wound.

 **Essence of Murtlap, High level**

 **Restore subject's health by a rate of 10% a minute.**

At least that was counteracting her bleeding status. Harry was about to apply more of the medicine when an angry voice snapped from behind him.

"What are you doing wizard! Put down your weapon and walk away from the mare!"

Harry looked around. It was a group of young centaurs; the human half of the oldest of them looked barely seventeen. Each of them had an arrow notched in their bows. Harry spread his inventory between himself and unicorn, ready to shield himself and the mare from arrows.

"I was helping her. She was hurt by a wizard in a cloak and I was trying to help her." Harry said while slowly backing off.

"And why should we believe you? Mayhapx it was you who hunted her down!"

They aimed their bows threateningly.

"I need to help her. She's bleeding out and I don't know how long I can stop it for. Don't let me near her if you don't want to but if there is any magic you have that can aid her - Help! Please!" Harry pleaded. He didn't have time to fight. The Murtlap's effects would fade soon and it needed to be reapplied to counteract the bleeding.

Perhaps they heard the sincerity and desperation in Harry's voice, for they slowly lowered their bows. The eldest of them came closer to take a look at the unicorn, before gravely replying, "Our healing magic is not fast enough to save her, but whatever you have done seems to have helped her. We will guard you and your patient young sorcerer, weave your healing magic without fear. Save her." The leader of the group of young centaurs said.

Harry promptly got back to the bottle of Murtlap Essence and started reapplying it along the edges of the wound, while taking off his jacket and using it to put pressure on the unicorn's flank as he desperately shoved away the memories of the werewolf John's death by bleeding. This wouldn't end the same way. He was going make sure of it.

The bleeding didn't even slow down.

"Her time has come," A centaur from his left muttered to his friend, his pity clearly audible in his voice.

"Not today," Harry snapped, "Not if I can help it."

And not even sparing a look at them he put away the Essence of Murtlap, realizing that there wasn't much more that it could do for her wounded side. Her wounds had started slowly clotting. Next thing he had to do was now was to tackle the blood loss. Harry didn't have blood replenishment potions on him, so the Wiggenwald potions he had left would have to do. He poured the potion down the unicorn's throat while maintaining the pressure on her flank, attempting to stem any and all bleeding.

"Observe!"

 **Unicorn (Status: Bleeding -10% hp per minute))**

 **Lv-20**

 **HP:260/5000**

 **MP:60/4000**

 **Str-25**

 **Vit-30**

 **Dex-60**

 **Int-18**

 **Wis-15**

 **Luc-16**

 **A female unicorn that has the ability to run fast at the expense of her innate magic. She can also sense the worthiness of a person by the very same magic. One of the most powerful and potent magical creatures out there, they are said to represent true beauty and purity.**

 **She is dying from the massive dark magic cut she's received on her side. She doesn't know Harry.**

It wasn't working!

Quickly trying to think of anything else, Harry looked around. His eyes caught a bird flying above the clearing and an idea struck him.

Desperately pouring all of his mana into his voice, he screamed into the night, "HEDWIG! HELP!"

A minute passed, and nothing happened, but just as Harry was about to give up, two balls of fire burst above the clearing, coalescing into two familiar birds. It was Hedwig! And she'd brought Fawkes to help!

They both flew down and without even needing to hear anything, joined Harry in healing the unicorn. Fawkes flew onto her flank and started dripping tears onto the wound, which instantly started closing much faster than before, while Hedwig perched near the equine's head and started singing a soulful tune, easing both Harry's nervous franticness and the unicorn's heavy breathing.

Slowly, more and more centaurs from the Forest's herd came, standing at the edge of the clearing, fighting off spiders and maghiras and any other dark creature that came towards the clearing with their lethal arrows.

They watched, as the boy and the two birds tirelessly labored over the unicorn.

Fawkes would lift the unicorn's legs and Harry would set them back into position and cast a solidifying spell at the broken bone with his wand. Hedwig sang a soothing tune, relieving the mare's pain that it felt from having its bones and joints snapped back together. One by one, as if they were putting a scattered puzzle back together, they worked tirelessly with naught a thought of giving up.

At last, Hedwig and Fawkes, armed with their ability to lift incredible weights, helped Harry lift the unicorn to a standing position, and Harry used his strength to balance the unicorn and help it take its first shaky steps.

When the unicorn started trotting around the clearing, albeit with a limp, Harry understood for the first time why becoming a healer was such a popular profession in the wizarding world. The sheer sense of relief and satisfaction that filled him upon seeing his work successful was beyond compare. Harry fell down to his knees with relief.

The unicorn saw him drop to the ground and idly ambled over to him to give him a lick on the hand and then going back to trotting around the clearing.

He smiled at that.

Ping!

 **Quest Completed!**

 **Save the unicorn!**

 **Rewards,**

 **+5 stat points**

 **5000 Exp**

 **A brand spanking new perk!**

Ping!

 **You have gained a new perk!**

 **Unicorn's Boost - Allows user to run as fast as a unicorn for a brief amount of time. That's around 70 kilometers per hour. Much faster than most other magical creatures.**

Ping!

 **You have gained a new skill by performing surgery on a magical creature!**

 **Healing, Lv - 1 (0%)**

 **Allows the user to heal diseases or ailments affecting himself or others.**

 **Limit - 1 ailment can be cured per use.**

 **Cost - 300 MP**

A familiar voice filled his mind,

" _We did it, Mr. Potter._ "

"That we did Fawkes," Harry said with a smile as he watched the centaurs disperse, the younger females amongst them helping the unicorn towards the direction of her herd.

Harry lay there for some time afterward, his two avian friends keeping him company, and once he felt a bit like himself again, he grabbed hold of Fawkes's tail feathers, and with Hedwig perched on his shoulder, they vanished in a burst of fire.

* * *

When Harry had walked into the black-eyed man's office the next evening for his detention/training, he had leveled a stare at Harry's eyes. A screen had popped up, saying,

 **Legilimency attack averted.**

Harry had willed it away and stared back at his professor's eyes. "Any reason you're trying to get in here Professor?" he had asked, tapping the side of his head.

"Your shields are adequate. You won't be needing to meditate or further learn Occlumency," the professor had said and walked off into a side-door, which had led into a cavernous room with walls of black rock. It had a few potions stewing along one wall and the rest of the room was entirely empty.

From then on, a long and rigorous training exercise began.

The Professor would cast dark and dangerous spells at the wall opposite of Harry and Harry, with his eyes closed, would have to select which one of the given list of spells he was casting.

When Harry had asked why they weren't starting with easier spells, for a moment Snape had gained a faraway look in his eyes. "This ability you have Mr. Potter…it comes at great cost. Only those with the most difficult of childhoods have ever formed their shields this early. The Dark Lord had, Albus Dumbledore had," he had looked away. "I had…and now you have."

Harry felt awful. The normally closed off and strict professor clearly felt that Harry needed the empathy and shared a deeply intimate part of his childhood with him. He felt rather horrible for deceiving him with his Gamer's mind shields and had then and there decided that he would work hard and do justice to the Professor's teachings.

"Keeping the high cost of this gift in mind, it would be insulting to use this as a way to pass tests or win a dueling contest. Furthermore, for someone of your…notoriety, detecting dark and dangerous spells is useful. I am making you recognize dark spells Potter, so that you will always know when one is heading for you. So that you will be able to protect yourself, and if you cannot, you will at least know how incompetent you are before you die."

Shaking the thoughts of the conversation off, Harry refocused himself on the task at hand. A spell splashed against the nearby wall.

"What was that?"

The magic felt sharp…almost as if it wanted to hurt, not kill…like it wanted to _cut_.

"Diffindo?"

"From _the list_ Potter. Diffindo at its worst can only cut a few millimeters of flesh. It is neither dark nor dangerous."

Harry ran his finger down the list, wavering between a _Sectumsempra_ and _Excacuere._ Realising that Sectum meant 'cut', he said, "Sectumsempra?"

Ping!

 **Mind Arts, Lv-5 (7%)**

 **The act of magically navigating through the many layers of a person's mind and correctly interpreting one's findings, either with others or one's own self. One of the rarest magics today due to its regulated teaching.**

 **Cost-40 MP per use**

Somehow, using his Gamer's mind for shielding and sensing spells seemed to be leveling up his Mind Arts. It was almost as if exercising one facet of his mind was somehow exercising everything related to it.

Or maybe Gamer's Mind _was_ actually a form of modified Occlumency, in which case, strengthening his Mind Arts skill was somehow bettering his Gamer's Mind, which was amazing.

"Correct. Now rest for a few minutes. I have to see to a potion."

Snape walked over to the potions station along the wall and started dicing some kind of slivery looking fruit. Harry sat down on the chair that stood near the working professor and closed his eyes, letting the smooth magic of potion making waft through his senses. If this was how it felt for Professor Snape to brew potions, Harry could definitely see why the Professor chose to have a Potions position and not DADA, even though the man was clearly well versed in Dark Arts and their counters. Speaking of which…

Getting his courage up, Harry asked, "Professor, is it true that you wanted to teach DADA?"

There was a moment of silence and Harry had wondered if he'd gone too far. Then came the reply, "I did apply for the position yes."

"So why didn't they give the position to you. You're clearly a better teacher than Quirrell."

"I'm sure Professor Quirrell will do a fine job of teaching you. You should respect his abilities more Mr. Potter," His tone was sly, almost sarcastic.

But Harry was feeling conflicted.

He'd have to tell someone about Quirrell soon. He couldn't let someone like that man teach a school full of children. He'd considered McGonagall and Flitwick, but right now the teacher who was most likely to believe him was the one he was talking to right now.

"Professor…I have to tell you something."

Harry told an extremely edited version of the story of the previous night to him. He told him that he'd been out of bounds in order to visit the library and had seen Quirrell put on a hooded robe and then he had followed him to the Forbidden Forest, where he'd seen him hunt down a unicorn and promptly run away.

"You shouldn't have followed him," Snape said. He put down the ladle he was stirring the potion with and put the fire on medium. Then he turned to Harry.

"It appears that Quirinus Quirrell…is a more dangerous man than I initially anticipated. The fact that he hasn't harmed any students in the school shows that he's after something else, something that requires the school remaining open. Something powerful and useful enough that he'd risk drinking unicorn blood for it. You know what drinking unicorn blood does, don't you Potter?"

"Afraid not Professor."

"It is a monstrous thing, to slay a unicorn. Only one who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, would commit such a crime. The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death, but at a terrible price. You have slain something pure and defenseless to save yourself, and you will have but a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches your lips," The Professor's voice was quiet, and after he finished talking, the silence weighed heavy on the entire room.

"What…what _could_ even be worth it?" Harry whispered, last night's memory of the broken unicorn fresh on its mind.

"You're an intelligent student Potter. You'll work it out yourself. But when you do, think twice before going after it. There are people who'd rather have you go after it as a test of your character…to see whether you are worthy of the trust this world places on you." He paused, as if deliberating whether to say what he wished to or not. "But I say don't. You don't owe this world a thing."

Harry vowed that he would remember that.

The Professor picked up his wand and they both resumed their initial positions. Harry sensed another spell splashing harmlessly into the obsidian wall behind him.

"What was that?" the professor's silky voice asked.

Harry looked down at the only spell left on his list.

"… _Avada Kedavra._ "

* * *

When Professor Snape had let Harry go, the time was well after the curfew. And of all people, who should Harry run into while he walked through the dungeons towards the stairs to the Entrance Hall but the crown prince of Slytherin himself, Draco Malfoy.

"Heir Malfoy," Harry acknowledged in the usual stuck-up-fantasy-book-nobleman-character style that he had perfected through hours of practicing in front of the mirror as the blond boy fell into step beside him, "Is it not too late for students to be out of bed?"

"I could say the same about you Heir Potter," The blond replied in kind before stopping Harry with a hand on the shoulder, "You have been avoiding me."

He was right. Harry had been avoiding the Slytherin. Mostly because Draco Malfoy's reputation as a bully had alienated him from most of the other three houses, but also because the boy confused him a little. His identity as an abused kid who loved his father confounded the heck out of Harry, and since he spent a lot of time with the Ravenclaw boys both in and out of class, who weren't very keen on seeing him talk to Malfoy, he usually tried to stay away.

Well, that and Harry wasn't very fond of the obnoxious boy who liked to pick on Neville whenever he saw him.

"I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about. And you haven't done yourself any favors by alienating most of the other houses. I have yet to meet a student outside of Slytherin that wants to even be seen around you." Harry replied, falling into the same cold persona that he used to deal with the pureblood.

The blond let go of his shoulder. "What are you ta-"

He was cut off by a meow that echoed through the corridor.

"Filch's cat. That dratted mule of a man must be behind it!" Draco hissed. "Come on! We need to hide."

They both raced off towards the nearest classroom door and let themselves in. Quietly shutting the door, they both put their ears against the door and listened with bated breath.

"Sniff around, my sweet, they might be lurking in a corner," they heard the muffled voice through the door. It was Filch speaking to Mrs. Norris.

"They're in here somewhere," they heard him mutter, "probably hiding." His voice faded away as they heard the shuffling of feet that went deeper into the dungeon.

"He's gone. Let's go." Harry mouthed to the other boy.

The blond grabbed the handle and pushed. The door didn't budge. "It's locked!" Draco snarled. "The foolish caretaker must have bolted it shut!"

"I don't think so," Harry muttered. Draco watched, puzzled as Harry took out a piece of paper from his pocket and slid it into the gap between the door and the wall. Then he slid it through the entire length of the door, without encountering any resistance.

"The paper slid all the way through. This door doesn't have any bolts or locks," Harry said, looking at the door curiously, "I think he used a locking charm."

Draco frowned. "But I thought the caretaker was a squib?"

"They could be just rumors. Besides, don't worry about it too much. Locking charms wear away pretty easily. We should be able to get out pretty soon."

Draco stared for a moment before nodding. They both went over the room and each sat down on one of the chairs.

"So what were you doing down in the dungeons so late Mr. Potter?"

"You can call me Harry. If we're going to be stuck in this room we might as well stop being so formal. I was going back to the tower from Snape's detention. "

"Detention in the first week," Draco sounded impressed, "That has to be some sort of new record!"

"Fastest in fifty years," Harry replied with a smile, "What were you doing outside your dorms? Doesn't Slytherin have a curfew or something?"

"Oh, we do. It's just that none of us obey it. Besides Filch rarely comes down to the dungeons, so we don't have problems," He frowned at the door, "Usually."

They sat there in silence for a few moments. Harry thought back to how he'd seen that Draco's description said that he was being tortured by his father.

 **Draco Malfoy**

 **Lv-4**

 **HP-320/320**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-5**

 **Vit-4**

 **Dex-4**

 **Int-6**

 **Wis-3**

 **Luc-3**

 **Draco Malfoy is a pure-blood wizard and the only heir of the Malfoy family. The son of a Death Eater, Draco was raised to believe strongly in the importance of blood purity. He wishes to be sorted into Slytherin house. Despite his father's violent torturous teaching sessions about blood purity and 'old times' Draco looks up to him and admires him.**

Reading it all again and thinking for a second about what he'd say, Harry asked, "So why are you so keen on having an alliance with me?"

"What do you mean?" For some reason, Draco's voice had gone entirely emotionless.

"Your father wasn't exactly on the side of my parents' lot in the wizarding war," Harry replied, "And even before the war our houses were political opposites. I've looked it up. And while my fame might be an attractive trait to your father to capitalize on, I sincerely doubt someone of his political clout would need a celebrity endorsement. I mean look at his resume! Hogwarts board governor, top Ministry diplomat, an active member of Wizengamot _and_ a majority owner of the wizarding world's biggest newspaper 'The Daily Prophet'. He has an arm or leg in every major branch of the wizarding world. Someone with that kind of political power doesn't need my fame. So what does he want from me? More importantly, what do _you_ want from me Draco?"

"I-I don-don't know wha-" Draco seemed entirely thrown off. Clearly he hadn't expected Harry to work it out.

" **Spare me the lies Draco. The truth please,** " the skill of bloodlust added that extra bit of magical intimidation to Harry's voice.

Draco looked afraid and hopeful at the same time and Harry absently realized what this bloodlust voice could look like to someone who wanted him to turn out to be a dark lord. He'd read in Draco's description that it was exactly what he thought.

The blond boy replied after a moment, "Well…lots of stuff has been in circulation for years about how you survived what should have been a lethal attack. Father believes that you're a great Dark wizard. The fact that you'd been removed from the wizarding community seemed to have supported this. He and a lot of his allies believe that you'll prove to be another, greater pure-blood champion. That you'd bring back the glory of the old days and protect us from the muggle invasion."

A long silence stretched through the empty room. Harry didn't break it.

"So are you?" Draco asked, breaking the silence that had stretched, looking desperately hopeful. "A dark wizard? Are you in training? Is Father right?"

"No," Harry's voice was flat.

Draco started to hyperventilate. "Maybe you're too young? I'll keep your secrets. I can wait. I can wait for as long as you need to train. I mean-"

"No Draco. I won't follow the path of the man that murdered my parents. I am not the next dark lord."

"B-but you have to be! Yo-you're Harry Potter! You destroyed the dark lord! And you didn't even know your parents really! You could've been brainwashed by muggles-you have to be-"

"DRACO!" Harry said sharply, breaking Draco out of the panic attack he was slipping into. "Calm down! It's okay."

"You don't _understand._ He spent _months_ before the Express _training_ me. He would _force_ me to learn how to act as I should in front of a new Dark Lord. _Hours_ of telling me of how you'd bring back the glory days. And _every time_ I got something wrong…and if he found out that all that was for nothing, he'd…he'd…"

Draco's hands were trembling.

Harry knew then and there what Malfoy Sr. was torturing Draco about. Guilt settled like a heavy weight in Harry's stomach. He didn't agree with their side's motives, nor their methods. But desperately clinging on to the last shreds of hope for something they desperately wanted…Harry could understand that.

Draco took a deep breath and continued. He seemed to have given up on his Dark Lord theory and was getting angry.

"Before you entered our world, my father would ask for how I was. He would care for what I wanted. But ever since _you_ came around _every single letter_ is about 'What is _Potter_ doing' and 'Did you manage to gain _Potter's_ trust' and 'Is _Potter_ a Dark Lord?' and it's like he's _forgotten_ me. When I came to this school I thought I was finally free to act as I wanted. And now I have to go around censoring everything I say and do so that _Potter_ doesn't find it offensive. I don't _care_! I DON'T WANT TO DO THIS ANYMORE!"

"Then don't," Harry's voice was quiet, yet somehow just as intense as Draco's screams of rage. "Tell your father you have my trust."

Their gazes met and Draco knew that Harry understood. "And do I?" Draco asked, calmer now, "Do I have your trust?"

"Not yet."

The door clicked open.

"Well, looks like the Locking Charm finally wore out," Harry said quietly. There was a moment of silence in which the two boys stood at the opposite ends of the classroom.

"I suppose I will…see you around…Harry," Draco finally replied and slipped out of the room.

Much like how he hadn't seen Harry cast the locking charm when they entered the classroom, he had not seen Harry cast the _Alohamora_ charm from the wand up his sleeve.

* * *

 **One of my stronger chapters I believe. Malfoy's little set up finally paid off, and now he is tentatively on Harry's side over his father's, and Harry finally figured out that something is wrong with Quirrell. And Snape's scene is also one I'm proud of. What did you think?**

 **Thanks to AndreyKI for inspiring the Dumbledore scene! Check out his review on _Fight or Flight_ to see what his original idea was.**


	12. Book-I:Reveal Your Secrets

Chapter 11:

The crackling of the fire burning in the common room fireplace echoed around the room, barely masking Harry's worried footsteps as he paced back and forth. It was early morning the Sunday after Snape's detention and Harry was feeling unusually conflicted and worried about what he should do.

The professors, or at the very least Snape, suspected Quirrell's misdemeanors and yet for some reason, they didn't seem to have any intention of sacking him. Harry had not heard even a whisper of any rumor of the DADA Professor being in any sort of trouble.

"Why?"

Harry kept trying and failing to think of why they would do that. Perhaps they were trying to make sure that Quirrell wouldn't be able to run free around the wizarding world doing whatever he pleased with no surveillance? Dumbledore _was_ a pretty powerful wizard, so they could be trying to contain him till they collected enough evidence of his illegal deeds…

Harry's train of thought ground to a stop.

"What _did_ he do that was illegal?" Harry whispered to himself, and it all clicked in his head. He himself had _no_ tangible and real evidence that anything wrong was going on. The only thing he had seen him do was to try to kill a unicorn, which was pretty reprehensible, but still legal. Their body parts were used in potions after all!

"Damn it!" he exclaimed out loud, angrily dropping into the chair by the fireplace.

When it all came down to it, all Harry was doing was working off a hunch and a vague clue that a professor had given him. A powerful hunch, but a hunch nonetheless. He had to collect more evidence…more information on what Quirrell was up to.

Taking a deep breath to calm himself, he leaned into the paper in front of him. The entire conversation of the night of the detention was written on it. Every single thing of any importance that the Professor had told him about Quirrell was in those paragraphs on the paper. Picking it up, he started reading it again.

 _Quirinus Quirrell is a dangerous man. The fact that he hasn't harmed any students in the school shows that he's after something else. Something powerful and useful enough that he'd risk drinking unicorn blood for it. You know what drinking unicorn blood does, don't you Potter?_ _It is a monstrous thing, to slay a unicorn. The only one who has nothing to lose, and everything to gain, would commit such a crime. The blood of a unicorn will keep you alive, even if you are an inch from death, but at a terrible price. You have slain something pure and defenseless to save yourself, and you will have but a half-life, a cursed life, from the moment the blood touches your lips. You're an intelligent one Potter. You'll work it out yourself. But when you do, think twice before going after it. There are people who'd rather have you go after it and test your character. But I say don't. You don't owe this world a thing._

Cutting it all down, he was left with just a few raw hard facts.

Quirinus Quirrell was a dangerous man. He was after something in the school. Something powerful. Snape knew what it was, and he believed that Harry would want to go after if he knew about it. Quirrell had been careful not to do anything illegal so that he couldn't be removed from the school before he got what he wanted.

Harry looked at the information he had with disdain and threw the paper into the common room fire. This wasn't enough to do anything at all!

'Okay, calm down,' he told himself, "There has to be something hidden in there. Snape was giving me a hint. All I need to do is figure out what it means, right? '

Calming down, he started to consider the larger picture.

Quirrell had been a Muggle Studies teacher for years before he was DADA. Why hadn't he stolen what he needed before this?

'Because whatever he wants wasn't here before. It's something new to the school. It's something powerful, so it has to be pretty well hidden or guarded too. And it's something Snape thought I would go after. Most people just think of me as some sort of young hero and I don't think I've given Snape any reason to think otherwise, so I guess he must have thought that I would try to protect the artifact, whatever it was.'

"So what is something new to the school and well protected," Harry mused out aloud.

"New and protected? Well, it could be whatever is being hidden in that third-floor corridor," a voice said from over his shoulder, making Harry jump a foot.

It was Terry. Grinning at Harry, he sat down on the chair beside him.

"Hidden?" Harry asked, intrigued.

"Yup. Heard there's a real Cerberus in there, standing on a trap door." Terry said as he leaned back into the chair and closed his eyes.

"How come I didn't know that? Where'd you find out about it?" Harry asked incredulously.

Terry looked at him with raised eyebrows before dryly replying, "You _would_ know if you talked to people outside the common room a little more. The Weasley twins have been in there at least twice."

Harry's face reddened a little. "I thought Ravenclaws were all about books and knowledge. Isn't socializing more of a Slytherin thing?"

"Socializing is a _human_ thing, Harry. And people can give you knowledge, too you know."

Embarrassed, Harry muttered a thank you and they both lapsed into silence, waiting for rest of the boys to come down and leave for breakfast.

Internally though, Harry was cursing himself in his head for not seeing it earlier. The answer had been staring at his face from _literally_ the first day he'd entered the school.

The third-floor corridor. That needed more investigation.

One thing was sure, Quirrell was not safe to be around children, least of all around his new friends. Until he was sure that the turbaned professor was no threat, Harry was dead set to keep working to foil whatever he intended to do.

* * *

"So what are you guys doing today?" Harry asked Terry, who plonked himself down beside him at the Ravenclaw table, as he poured a spoonful of sugar into his porridge.

"Nothing too concrete. I'll probably check out the fiction section of the library," Terry said, "Got to say, muggles may not have magic, but their fiction has these wizarding novels beat fair and square."

"Homework," Michael chimed in through a mouthful of potatoes.

"Well Anthony and I are off to the Quidditch pitch to see the Ravenclaw team practice," added Stephen, frowning at Michael, as if revolted by his despicable table manners. He turned to Harry, "Wanna come?"

"I thought it was supposed to be the two of us," Anthony muttered. Harry frowned a bit. Had he somehow alienated the boy? He had always been polite to him.

Replying to Stephen's question, he said, "Nah mate. I'm good. I have my issues with that sport and I don't think I could sit through an actual game without lecturing both of your ears off."

As the boys chuckled at Harry's now infamous disapproval of the game, Harry discreetly cast observe on Anthony.

 **Anthony Goldstein**

 **Lv-5**

 **HP-250/250**

 **MP-150/150**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-4**

 **Vit-4**

 **Dex-5**

 **Int-7**

 **Wis-5**

 **Luc-4**

 **Anthony Goldstein is a half-blood wizard and the son of two muggleborn potion shop owners. He grew up in a magical household in Ravenstonedale until, at age eleven, he learned that he had been accepted into Hogwarts. He is a smart and studious boy but likes to lay Quidditch and sleep a lot.**

 **He likes Harry but is a bit jealous of Harry's ability to make friends so quickly.**

Harry's eyebrows went up. Was he jealous of _Harry's_ ability to make friends? The one who people only talked to because he was famous? The one who never left his dorm room unless it was for the classes or the library?

Regardless, Harry himself used to have his fair share of problems making friends during his Dursley days, so he understood Anthony's plight quite well. He decided to let him have some time with Stephen.

"I think I'll go off exploring again," Harry said.

"Didn't you go exploring last weekend too?" Terry asked.

"There's just so much to see I guess," Harry replied with a shrug and went back to his porridge. Like Anthony, his Gamer's Mind had stopped him from misjudging many people, and Harry was thankful for that. His eyes drifted towards the Gryffindor table…he had judged Ron Weasley on the train…walked right out on the boy when he'd dredged up his memories from the night of his parents' deaths… had he alienated a tactless, but ultimately innocent boy, just out of his own instinctive anger?

He shook his head. What was done was done. There wasn't much he could do about it now, so there wasn't much point in thinking about it.

Just then, the mail arrived.

Harry had gotten used to this by now and didn't give it too much mind, but it had given him a bit of a shock on the first morning when about a hundred owls had suddenly streamed into the Great Hall during breakfast, circling the tables until they saw their owners, and dropping letters and packages onto their laps.

Nobody had brought Harry anything so far. This morning, however, a tiny brown owl dove out of the flock and straight down towards him. Harry, having not been paying much attention to the owls, didn't see this until a window flashed up.

 **Warning: High-speed avian missile incoming!**

"Huh?"

BONK!

The owl smacked headfirst into Harry's forehead and knocked him straight off the bench and onto the ground.

"OW!"

The owl struggled to its feet, shook itself, flapped its wings, and flew up onto the table hooting angrily at the rest of the students on the table, who were laughing. It dropped a note onto Harry's plate, grabbed a piece of bacon, and flew off.

Harry struggled back into his seat and ignoring the laughter of his friends, tore the letter open at once. It said, in a very untidy scrawl,

 _Dear Harry,_

 _I don't know if you remember me, but I knew your mum and dad back in the day, and they'd have my head if I didn't write to you after you came to Hogwarts. I know you get Tuesday afternoons off, so would you like to come and have a cup of tea with me at around three? I want to hear all about your time at Hogwarts so far._

 _Send me an answer back with a school owl._

 _Rubeus Hagrid_

If there was anyone who would know about a three-headed dog in the school, it was sure to be the groundskeeper. Harry pulled out a quill, scribbled 'Yes, please, see you on Tuesday' on the back of the note, and dropped it into his pocket, in which Hedwig stayed.

"Could you get this to the groundskeeper girl? His hut's near the forest edge. You've seen it." He muttered down to Hedwig, who was warbling with laughter inside the pocket, having seen the entirely amusing series of events through the one-sided transparent pocket.

"Calm down, you spoiled little roast chicken," Harry muttered. He heard a faint chirp and a pair of whooshes, dimmed through the quieting charm.

The letter was delivered.

* * *

After eating and waving goodbye to his friends, Harry made his way to the grounds, let Hedwig free, and started jogging along the walls of a section of the castle where nobody was roaming, hoping to increase his Dex a bit. The last time he'd handled the Legion Zombie well, but it'd drained him pretty hard. He'd have to get faster, since the Legion's biggest weakness was its speed and range of attack.

Suddenly, an idea struck him. Opening up a window, he quickly flipped to his perks. Sure enough, it was there.

 **Unicorn's Boost- Allows user to run as fast as a unicorn for a brief amount of time. That's around 70 kilometers per hour. Much faster than most other magical creatures.**

But how much was a brief amount of time? Harry clicked on the time, and the perk's text box expanded a bit and more text appeared.

 **Usage time - (Dex + Wis) minutes + (Mana Pool Capacity) seconds**

 **Speed and Time improvable by practice.**

He pulled up his stat window.

 **HP-525/525**

 **MP-300/300**

 **STR-12**

 **VIT-10(+4)=14**

 **DEX-12(+4)=16**

 **INT-16**

 **WIS-14**

 **LUC-19**

 **POINTS-25**

He started calculating his run time.

 **Usage time = (16+14) minutes + 300 seconds = 35 minutes**

So his run time came down to 35 minutes. Which wasn't so brief after all. Harry sent a mental thank you to the unicorn that had given him the ability.

Quickly deciding that it was time for an upgrade, Harry started distributing his stat points. While grinding would be much easier, Harry wasn't going to have time to grind his stats with all the exams and homework that was heading his way, and stat points were often given as rewards for his academic quests, so he could afford to splurge a little. He put ten in Vit, four in Dex, six in Wis and the remaining five in luck.

 **STR-12**

 **VIT-20(+4)=24**

 **DEX-16(+4)=20**

 **INT-16**

 **WIS-20**

 **LUC-24**

Nodding at his new stats, he turned back to the perk, which now had a usage time of 48 minutes!

This perk had almost limitless potential. Harry wondered how fast he could actually move using the Unicorn Boost perk. There were some really cool things that could be done with super-speed. Why, there was even that new 'Flash' TV show that had just come on air in 1990. Harry had managed to catch a few glimpses while Dudley watched it. It was about a guy that could move really fast, and he did some pretty amazing stuff like running up walls and running on water.

Putting that out of his mind, Harry activated the Boost prepared to do some really fast running when suddenly,

 **Warning! Arrow incoming!**

This time, Harry had learned from his early morning mistakes, and he ducked. Looking back at the forest from where the arrow had come, he saw a centaur holding his bow. He turned around, and saw a piece of paper attached to the arrow.

Tearing it off, Harry read it,

 _Follow the messenger._

Frowning, Harry looked back at the so-called messenger that'd almost murdered him. Deciding to give him a real scare, he dropped into an ID, ran using the unicorn boost to the point just behind where the young centaur was standing in the real world and broke out of the red-skied dimension.

"You could have killed me," he growled over his shoulder.

The centaur, who Harry recognized as the leader of the group he'd seen earlier while healing the unicorn, let out a squeak.

"Yeah…Sorry about that. I'm a bit new to this delivering messages by arrows to look intimidating thing," he said sheepishly after he composed himself, "Follow me. The elder is waiting."

And follow him Harry did. He led Harry through a yet unexplored path through the forest and into a clearing where another centaur stood. He looked much older than the messenger with wilted skin and strange markings on his face. The young centaur took a bow and backed out of the clearing. It was not until the sound of him galloping away faded did the elder centaur spoke.

"Harry James Potter," he spoke. His wizened voice seemed to somehow hold the tenor of a thousand ancient voices that echoed off the trees surrounding them. "You have been judged worthy."

"Worthy of what?" Harry asked.

The centaur said no more and turned around to pull something out of the leaf satchel that he was wearing. Harry used observe on him.

 **Mahou**

 **Lv-?**

 **HP-?/?**

 **MP-?/?**

 **Race-Centaur**

 **Str-?**

 **Vit-?**

 **Dex-?**

 **Int-?**

 **Wis-?**

 **Luc-?**

 **?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?**

"I would prefer it if you would not attempt to scry me again Harry Potter."

Harry almost smacked his head as he remembered that centaurs could sense his observe.

"Sorry" he quickly apologized.

The centaur, Mahou, pulled out a bow. It was a sleek and powerful looking weapon, made of a wood that almost seemed to shimmer in the rays of sunlight. An almost luminescent string joined the two ends of the bow, taut and ready to fire.

Despite knowing that wands and guns had made bows obsolete in the modern day, Harry couldn't help but admire the sheer quality of the workmanship that had gone into making it.

"This, Harry Potter, is the legendary Gandiva," Mahou said, holding out the bow towards Harry. "A gift from our people for protecting our forest's inhabitants."

Harry grabbed the bow and suddenly it shrunk down to fit his form. It was clearly magical and also incredibly well balanced. Harry used observe on it.

 **The Gandiva**

 **This 6000 year old legendary bow is one of the most powerful magical weapons out there. It is indestructible, can create arrows inexhaustibly and fires arrows with the strength of a thousand bows. Its arrows can be enchanted to do a variety of things and can penetrate most magical shields. It can turn into a ring when not being used. When in ring form, it can protect its user from all forms of poison.**

 **It's unable to be lifted by anyone it judges unworthy. If you hold this, you've impressed a lot of right people.**

 **Attack-100 + (10 x level of Archery)**

 **+50% when used against the ill-intentioned.**

 **+100% when used by a magically competent being.**

Harry experimentally pulled back the string with some effort. An arrow appeared into existence, notching into the bow as if it had been there all along. Harry pointed it at a tree in front of him, trying to keep his wobbling hand steady, and let go of the string.

The arrow somehow hit the target tree despite Harry's unstable hands. And ripped a hole straight through it and lodged itself into the next tree in line.

Harry's mouth fell open. That tree had to have been at least _4 meters_ in girth.

He looked at the bow. The game wasn't kidding when it said that Gandiva had 'the strength of a thousand bows.'

Ping!

 **Due to trying out a bow a new skill has been created!**

 **Archery, Lv-1 (2%)**

 **You can shoot an arrow, it may or may not hit it's target.**

 **Accuracy-5%**

Fuming at the unfairness of the Game at giving him an only 2% accuracy, Harry frowned.

"This is a weapon for the righteous, Harry Potter. It is an aid to those whose hearts are pure. It will not only fight your enemies but will also help you keep yourself true to your path. Do you accept this gift and free this forest of the debt it owes you?"

"I do." Harry said, "Thank you."

"Then go forth, Harry Potter, and use it well."

Harry nodded and bowed to the elder centaur. With a tilt of his head back to Harry, Mahou turned around and slowly trotted out of the clearing.

"Well," Harry muttered out loud into the empty clearing. "At least I know what today's training is going to be. ID Create: Zombies!"

The red skied dimension appeared and Harry started preparing for his planned archery grinding.

First, he lit a blazing hot circle of fire, a few feet wide, all around him and made sure that his mana wasn't being drawn too much. If any zombie managed to get close enough, it would be burnt to a crisp.

He then equipped his Apprentice Zombie Killer title.

 **Apprentice Zombie killer- 30% more attack and defence when dealing with the undead. +5 to all stats when dealing with the undead.**

His new stats were,

 **STR-12(+5)=17**

 **VIT-20(+4+5)=29**

 **DEX-16(+4+5)=25**

 **INT-16(+5)=21**

 **WIS-20(+5)=25**

 **LUC-24(+5)=29**

'This should do just fine.' Harry told himself as he pulled out his wand.

" _Periculum!_ " Harry yelled, pointing at the sky. Red sparks flew towards the sky and settled floating above the clearing.

'This should get the attention of most zombies in the forest. I probably won't go up to Legions today,' Harry decided. He put his wand back into the inventory and pulled the string of the bow taut, notching an arrow and getting ready for the first horde to come.

* * *

Clark the flesh-eating zombie was having a good day. He'd feasted on some troll remains and was about to propose to Lois the flesh-eating zombie by giving her the leftovers from the juiciest and best brains he had ever eaten. He happily hobbled along towards the red spot of light in the sky, singing his favorite song.

"ARGHAARAAAA. ARARARARAM. ARGH URGH. URGH"

Zombie songs were strange in their own way, but culture was culture, and everyone deserved a right to their own.

Suddenly, Clark saw a two-legged creature that had white skin and was holding a bow in his hand, and started hobbling towards it. Its could be his brains he'd give Lois. That would surely win her heart.

"BRAAIAAIANS," he said resolutely and hobbledy hobblety hobbled on.

But fate had other plans! Winning his sweetheart's heart wasn't going to be that easy! Looking across the clearing, he saw his arch-nemesis Bruce the flesh-eating zombie coming towards the clearing from the jungle with his own set of brains. Surely he wouldn't dare! Surely he wouldn't try to steal the creature's brains and spoil Clark's love life. Surely not!

"ARRRGGHHHHH!" Clark yelled at Bruce and started hobbling faster

"ARRGGGGHHHHGURGLE" Bruce gloated. He was almost right behind him and getting ready to trip Clark up.

"AAAA-" They both promptly shut up as a pair of arrows aimed at the opposite side of the clearing somehow missed their mark by 15 meters and pierced them right through their hearts and pinned them straight into the trees behind them before turning them both into dust.

And thus ended the lives of Clark and Bruce.

Harry frowned at the last two dead screaming zombies and quickly picked up all the loot and broke out of the ID with an "ID Escape!" before a Legion zombie could form.

Ping!

 **Due to accurate shots (somewhat) +3 to Dex!**

Ping!

 **Due to use of a professional bow's drawstring, your Str has risen by +2!**

Ping!

 **Due to constant bow and arrowing you have leveled up a skill nine times!**

 **Archery, Lv-10 (40%)**

 **You can shoot an arrow, it may or may not hit it's target.**

 **Accuracy- 10%**

 **Special magic arrows**

 **Fire Arrows - Its arrows with their heads on fire. What do you want me to describe about that?**

 **+10% Damage**

"That is some pretty decent growth. At least I have a secondary weapon now if I can't use magic for some reason,' Harry decided and put his loot into the inventory.

 **1000**

 **30G**

 **24S**

He then mentally commanded the bow to turn into a ring. The bow liquefied and flowed into the shape of a plain gold band, which he put on his finger. Then he called for Hedwig, who flamed them both back to the Ravenclaw tower, and that was that for Sunday.

* * *

After learning about the theory of _Avifors_ spell; which changed the target of the spell into a bird; on Monday in Transfiguration and brewing a Boil-Cure potion in Potions on Tuesday morning, Harry set off early on Tuesday afternoon to talk to Rubeus Hagrid.

The Gamekeeper's wooden hut's chimney spewed smoke, indicating that the caretaker must have started preparing for the tea. A crossbow and a pair of galoshes were outside the front door, leaning on the wall. When Harry knocked on the door he heard a frantic scrabbling and scratching from inside and several booming barks. There was a dog inside. Harry grew a bit weary, Marge's dogs were always bad news.

Then a deep booming voice, Rubeus Hagrid's voice, rang out saying, "Back, Fang back!"

The caretaker's big, bearded face appeared in the crack as he pulled the door open. Harry took a moment to acknowledge the contrast in both of their statures.

"Hang on," the half-giant said. "Back, Fang."

Harry cast observe.

 **Rubeus Hagrid - Keeper of the Keys**

 **Lv-35**

 **HP-24000/24000**

 **MP-1000/1000**

 **Race-Half-Giant Wizard**

 **Str-58**

 **Vit-50**

 **Dex-12**

 **Int-20**

 **Wis-25**

 **Luc-12**

 **Rubeus Hagrid, who prefers to be called Hagrid is a half-giant wizard and son of Mr Hagrid and the giantess Fridwulfa. Hagrid attended Hogwarts in 1940 and was sorted into Gryffindor but his wand was snapped and he was expelled later on. He was trained to be the gamekeeper of Hogwarts and allowed to live on the school grounds at the request of Albus Dumbledore.**

 **He likes Harry because he remembers him as a 'wee lad'. He really wants to get to know him.**

'Nothing bad then. That's a relief,' Harry thought.

"Ah! There yeh are Harry!" he exclaimed and let him in, struggling to keep a hold on the collar of an enormous black boarhound.

There was only one room inside. Hams and pheasants were hanging from the ceiling, a copper kettle was boiling on the open fire, and in the corner stood a massive bed with a patchwork quilt over it.

Harry looked up into the fierce, wild, shadowy face of the groundskeeper and noticed that his beetle eyes were crinkled in a smile. "I haven't introduced meself 'ave I?. Rubeus Hagrid, Keeper of Keys and Grounds at Hogwarts. Now don't go callin' me Mister and all tha'. Just Hagrid." He said.

"Will do Hagrid," Harry returned the smile. The half giant was much gentler than his stature indicated.

"Las' time I saw you, you was only a baby," said Hagrid, fidgeting nervously, "Yeh know, yeh look a lot like yer dad, but yeh've got yet mum's eyes."

Harry's smile grew at that.

"Make yerself at home," said Hagrid, going over to bring the tea and letting go of Fang, who bounded straight at Harry and started licking his shoes. Like Hagrid, Fang was clearly not as fierce as he looked. Harry petted his head.

"You knew my parents Hagrid?" Harry asked Hagrid, who was pouring boiling water into a large teapot and putting rock cakes onto a plate.

"Aye, that I did." said Hagrid "I spent years o' me life chasin' yer father and his friends away from the forest. And yer mother was a sweethear'. Always kind ter everybody."

The rock cakes were shapeless lumps with raisins that almost broke his teeth, but Harry pretended to be enjoying them as Hagrid told him endless anecdotes about his parents. In return, he told him all about his first lessons. Fang rested his head on Harry's knee and drooled all over his robes.

The moment Harry heard Hagrid call Filch "that old git" after he'd told Hargid an edited version of how Filch had almost caught him outside bed, he'd decided that he liked Hagrid. The half-giant wasn't the brightest of bulbs, but he was incredibly honest and lovable.

"An' as fer that cat, Mrs. Norris, I'd like ter introduce her to Fang sometime. D'yeh know, every time I go up ter the school, she follows me everywhere? Can't get rid of her…Filch puts her up to it I tell yeh!"

There was a small pause in the conversation as Hagrid sipped at his mug full of tea. Harry picked up a piece of paper that was lying on the table under the tea cozy. It was a Daily Prophet:

 _GRINGOTTS BREAK-IN LATEST_

 _Investigations continue into the break-in at Gringotts on 31 July, widely believed to be the work of Dark wizards or witches unknown._

 _Gringotts goblins today insisted that nothing had been taken. The vault that was searched had in fact been emptied the same day._

 _"But we're not telling you what was in there, so keep your noses out if you know what's good for you," said a Gringotts spokesgoblin this afternoon._

"Hagrid…" said Harry suddenly feeling a sinking feeling in his stomach, "…this Gringotts break-in happened on my birthday. It might've been happening while Professor McGonagall and I were there shopping at Diagon Alley."

Hagrid seemed to not want to meet Harry's eyes. He grunted and offered him another rock cake. Harry read the story again. The vault that was searched had in fact been emptied earlier that same day. Was it actually that far a conclusion to draw that the vault and the third floor corridor were related?

The thief wouldn't have been after money, it'd be much easier and less suicidal robbing a house for that. It had to be some precious treasure or a valuable artefact. After all, the only place safer than Gringotts was Hogwarts. So it made sense that it was moved to Hogwarts on the same day. In fact, it was probably McGonagall who emptied it while Harry was selecting his wand.

Everything fit. Whatever was taken from Gringotts was now at Hogwarts, and Quirrell was after it. He'd have to get some more information out of Hagrid. Putting down the paper, he took another sip of tea.

"So Hagrid," he said casually, "Is there really a three-headed dog in the third-floor corridor?"

Hagrid dropped the teapot and started coughing. "How do you know about Fluffy?" he said in between coughs.

"Fluffy?" Harry asked incredulously. He'd named a giant three-headed dog so fierce it was said to guard the gates to the _underworld_ , FLUFFY!

"Yeah, he's mine…bought him off a Greek chappie I met in the pub las' year."

"But why is he in the school Hagrid? I mean, isn't it dangerous to the students?" Harry pressed. In the back of his mind, he felt bad for trying to take advantage of his new friend. He promised himself that he'd get him a good Christmas present to at least try to make up for this.

"Rubbish! Fluffy wouldn' harm a fly. Spo' o' music and he jus' falls asleep." Hagrid said, waving his concerns away. Harry filed away that information for later.

"There are rumors spreading in the school that Fluffy's up there guarding something Hagrid. And there are kids who've been trying to get past it. I just want to know if they'll be safe."

Ping!

 **Skill levelled up**

 **Bullshitting Lv-4 (35%)**

 **A combanation of lying and the truth said in a very confident manner!**

"Musta' been thos' two Weasley twins up ter no good again." Harry grumbled quietly before he spoke in a louder voice. "Dont' yer worry abou' it Harry. Dumbledore's himself got me to put him there an' he'd never let any student in danger. Grea' man Dumbledore. Now, don't ask me anymore," said Hagrid gruffly. "That's all top secret, that is."

Harry tried to push for more. "But-"

"I'm tellin' yeh Harry don't go lookin' into all this!" said Hagrid hotly, "Now, listen to me…yer meddlin' in things that don' concern yeh. It's dangerous. You forget abou' Fluffy, an' you forget what it's guardin'. That's all betwee' Professor Dumbledore an' Nicolas Flamel-"

Harry's expression grew triumphant for a second before he schooled it back into a polite smile. Hagrid looked furious with himself.

The conversation then changed back to Harry's parent's school days by an unspoken agreement between the giant and the boy, and with an invitation to come by whenever he felt like it, Hagrid sent him off just before the sun went down.

Harry had a pretty solid idea about what the three headed dog was guarding in the third floor corridor.

* * *

A quick perusal of the library had revealed Nicholas Flamel to be the creator of the Philosopher's Stone, fabled to give immortality and unlimited wealth to its bearer. Harry now had a target, a suspect and a motive for a possible crime. All he needed was a time, and he would be able to catch the thief red-handed.

The next few weeks were extremely unpleasant for Harry. He had an incredibly hard time sitting still in Quirrell's class, letting the stuttering man ask him questions and answering them as if everything was normal.

He'd resolved that he'd work hard on getting more information on Quirrell, but apparently, the man had the entire school fooled. Even the infamous Weasley twins didn't prank the man too much out of pity, and going to any other teachers wasn't even in question since he couldn't let anybody know about his powers. It was a miracle that Snape hadn't suspected anything nor taken points for him being out of bed so late.

Harry had foregone grinding on the Sundays and scoured the library for any form of spying magic, but every spell he found turned out to have some weakness or the other. And almost none of them lasted long enough for what Harry needed.

It wasn't until the second weekend of October, that Harry hit something actually concrete enough to help him.

It was midnight, and Harry found himself on his bed in the Ravenclaw dorms with his curtains drawn. The book _Enchanted Encounters_ lay beside him as he tinkered with the little piece of muggle technology in front of him.

"Observe"

 **Spy bug**

 **A "bug" is a secret listening device that is used to listen in on conversations while not being in the same room. It is a recording and transmitting device often hidden in places not easily detected.**

Harry used a quill's nib to pry it open. Sighing at the sparking electronics, he cursed the fact that high amounts of magic seemed to destroy any electronic technology. He frowned as he remembered something.

'Isn't the British Ministry of Magic located right under London? How does that work out without blowing up most of London's electrical systems?'

Shaking his head, he got back to working on making it work as a magical contraption. He threw away the electronic components and layered a listening charm onto the tiny beetle shaped contraption and connected the receiver earpiece to it.

Then, carefully doing as the book said, he carved a single tiny rune of permanency on top of the bug. Turning back to the book, he read the next part.

"Pour the willingly given essence of a magical creature on the rune carefully," Harry read before turning to his avian friend, "Hedwig, could you?"

Hedwig fluttered down from the bed's headboard, brought her head close to the tiny bug and dropped a single tear onto the rune he'd just carved. The rune flashed once and then started glowing a very dim blue. A gentle, almost inaudible hum started emanating from the bug, showing that the charm was active.

"That should do it."

Harry put the earpiece into his ear, and Hedwig hopped over to the bug and chirped at it. Sure enough, the chirp came through to Harry through the earpiece. He shot Hedwig a grinning thumbs up.

"Observe."

 **Enchanted Spy bug**

 **This 'bug' is a secret listening device that is used to listen in on conversations while not being in the same room. It has a listening charm connected to a receiver and can stick to surfaces easily.**

Harry smiled. At least he hadn't had to tape a mechanical tape recorder to the roof of the third-floor corridor. That probably wouldn't have lasted long.

Ping!

 **You have unlocked a new skill**

 **Enchanting Lv-1(65%)**

 **You can use this skill to imbue magical properties to a nonmagical object by layering spells and runes together. The process can make the spells last much longer than normal. High enough level in this can even make the spells permanent.**

 **10% chance of success**

And now he had this! Enchanting was a seventh-year subject and Harry was learning the basics in his first year itself! That was great!

Harry grabbed Hedwig's tail feather and they quickly teleported right into the third-floor corridor, where Harry levitated the bug towards the ceiling and stuck it there. Then, they promptly flamed out of there.

It was too risky to put such a magical device near Quirrell and risk exposure. He'd surely just kill Harry and make a grab for the stone and run for it. He was powerful enough for it. But if he put his big in the third-floor corridor, he'd know every time someone went in there and he'd be ready.

Or so he thought.

But soon, hours turned into days, and yet nothing happened.

Harry had taken to sleeping with the earpiece on since he knew that Quirrell would be busy with classes for the day and would most probably make his move at night. He'd expected to hear something pretty soon, but it wasn't until well into the night on Wednesday next week that Harry finally heard something from the receiver of the Spy Bug.

It activated with a static buzz, waking Harry up. He promptly made sure his bed curtains were drawn and silenced and he pulled out his wand.

" _Sonorus_ " he cast at the receiver, and Hedwig and Harry both huddled over the receiver to listen to what was going on.

There was the sound of more than one sets of footsteps, a door opening and panting. The dog, Harry thought. Someone must have come to feed it, he realized, when he heard the sound of jaws snapping and the almost nauseating sound of the three heads swallowing.

" _You still won't tell me how to get past the beast?_ " came a smooth voice from the receiver. It wasn't Quirrell. It was Professor Snape!

" _It's what Nicholas asked for. No two protectors will know each other's traps. And one simply does not refuse Nicholas Flamel, Severus. He is the reason half the students can even afford to attend the school. We have to attempt to accommodate his requests._ "

This voice wasn't Quirrell either. It was Headmaster Albus Dumbledore! His voice seemed reprimanding, almost as if Snape should have known not to ask such a question.

" _I'm still unsure why you haven't just kept the stone in your pocket all the time. Surely it'd be safer on your person than anywhere else,_ " Snape said, his tone unapologetic.

The headmaster chuckled " _I'm afraid Nicholas doesn't believe me to be that free from temptation. And rightly so. Even I don't believe myself to be that free from it._ "

" _But you asked me to set up a word puzzle, of all things. One that even a child could get through. I realize you want Potter to come after the stone to test if he has been corrupted by the Dark Lord or not, but after what he saw Quirinus do in the fore-_ "

" _The boy could have been lying._ "

" _I am fully capable of telling when someone is lying!_ "

" _I know Severus. But he could have been mistaken. He saw a cloaked man who looked like Qurinus. That is not conclusive. While it is troubling, it could have just as likely been a passing vampire that got a bit too excited upon seeing a unicorn. The centaurs would have handled him after Harry saw him and ran off._ "

" _But Quirre-_ "

" _Severus! Quirinus Quirrell has been your colleague for ten years! At his personal risk, he has chosen to teach a year of Defense before retiring despite the curse the position bears out of his own free will. I fail to understand where your sudden animosity is coming from._ "

There was a small period of silence where the dog's sounds of eating echoed from the receiver. Snape didn't reply.

The headmaster finally broke the silence, " _And even if what you suggest is true; which I honestly doubt it is; and Quirinus has been helping Lord Voldemort, then he will try to get me out of the school when he tries to make a move for it. When he does, he will be caught red-handed trying to steal the stone. No harm no foul._ "

There was a brief period of silence when Harry tried to string together everything he'd just heard. The Headmaster wanted him to come after the stone to test his character. So that was what Snape was warning him about! And Voldemort was involved! It made so much sense! The Stone was famous for its powers of immortality and healing, so it made sense he'd try to use it to bring himself back!

" _Speaking of people coming after the stone, when I told you to clue young Harry about the stone to set him off in the right direction, that was quite a risky thing you did Severus, telling him not to go after it,_ " the Headmaster said.

Harry stilled.

" _I meant every word of it,"_ Snape replied, his tone defiant, _"Besides, what would you have had me do Headmaster? Hand the entire schematics of the third floor to him in a letter with a neat little bow on the top? If the boy will come after the stone, he will do it of his own free will. If I had outright told him to go after the stone, he would have suspected something. There is more Lily in him than his face shows._ "

" _There was a chance he would have listened to you and not investigated it. We are lucky he went to Hagrid at all._ "

" _It was you who suggested to him to write to Potter. Do not pretend you didn't expect him to go. It was only a matter of time before that buffoon blurted something out about the stone._ "

Harry was shaking. It was all a manipulation…the detention…the advice…all of it. Some sort of play to make sure that he was some sort of _hero._ To make it all worse, the headmaster didn't even acknowledge that Quirrell and Voldemort were a threat to the stone! This was all going downhill! Harry's mind was left reeling.

" _And once again I must bow to your superior understanding of a student's mind Severus._ "

" _I'm not sure I entirely agree with this so-called test you've set up. There have to be safer ways to test the boy. Ways to do so without risking his life._ "

" _Not with the shields he has developed Severus._ " the old man's voice was almost sorrowful.

" _And whose fault is that?_ "

There was a heavy sigh and the sound of the door closing.

" _Goodnight Severus_ ," the headmaster said, and the sound of footsteps slowly faded away.

The receiver turned off with a small buzz.

Harry looked at Hedwig, who seemed to be very distressed, before activating Gamer's Mind. Now was no time to get angry or worry about things. He needed to look at this objectively.

The headmaster was planning to test him to make sure he wasn't a dark wizard or something. It seemed that Draco and his father's stupid little Dark Lord Potter conspiracy was something the old man had considered as well.

But there was an even bigger problem! A real Dark Lord was coming after the stone!

"Damn it! Damn it all to hell!" Harry said angrily. He couldn't let it fall into the hands of the one person his parents gave their lives fighting! He had to go after the stone anyways!

But one thing was clear. While Snape and Dumbledore seemed to have good intentions, they were not to be trusted, and in the meantime, there was something else to worry about.

Halloween was coming.

* * *

The next few days passed in a sort of a hazy blur, mostly without event except for the times Harry's subject skills leveled up due to some difficult classes.

 **Potions, Lv-6 (75%)**

 **Your skill in brewing and creating potions with your magic is shown in this skill.**

 **Transfiguration, Lv-6 (2%)**

 **Your skill in transfiguration branch of magic with your magic is shown in this skill.**

 **Charms, Lv-7 (18%)**

 **Your skill in the art of charms with your magic is shown in this skill.**

For some reason, he'd never had a skill show up for entirely theoretical subjects such as History or Astronomy. It was a shame really, since he could've used some motivation to go sit in Binns's classes.

On the morning of Halloween Harry was feeling a bit out of sorts, so at breakfast he'd gone up to the Head table and informed Professor Flitwick that he'd be unable to attend the extra classes that had been set to take place that day, to which the tiny professor had given a sad smile and told him not to worry about it.

He'd wandered around the castle's corridors for a while with no particular destination in mind, letting the ever-changing stairs and corridors guide his way wherever he went.

Eventually, he wound up in the Astronomy tower, which had the nice benefit of being always empty during the day. The non-stop chattering, celebrating, and cheering that his classmates seemed to be partaking in was starting to sour his mood a little bit.

He didn't begrudge them their joy, of course. The Wizarding World had seen the end of a war to end all wars on this day, and they deserved to celebrate it. It just so happened that the day of the greatest celebration in the Wizarding World coincided with the worst tragedy of his entire life.

Deciding that it would be best to spend his Halloween up here in the tower so that he wouldn't end up putting a damper on the celebrations, Harry pulled out a book from his inventory and settled snugly onto the ledge of one of the windows overlooking the Great Lake.

The afternoon soon passed and the moon had just risen when Harry heard someone's footsteps coming up the spiral staircase of the tower. Hurriedly, he jumped off the ledge of the window and onto his feet, barely in time before the door opened and a woman walked in.

It was Professor Vector.

"Oh. Mr. Potter! What are you doing here this late? Shouldn't you be getting ready for the feast?" she asked, noticing Harry from over her stacks of books.

"I was feeling a bit unwell Professor," Harry said in a perfectly level tone, although it seemed the Professor had made the connection already, since her face wilted and her expression turned into one of pity.

There was a moment's silence, in which Harry turned back towards the window, not wanting to see the pity in her eyes anymore.

"Did you know Mr. Potter," she said after a moment's pause, putting down her books on the table and walking over to where Harry stood next to the window, "that most wizards believe that the veil between life and death is the thinnest on Samhain night."

Harry looked at her questioningly.

"Professor Snape had mentioned to me that you seem to have an aptitude at sensing magical currents. Is that true?"

He hesitantly nodded.

"Then I'm sure you wouldn't mind me teaching you a little trick," she said, before pulling out her wand from up her sleeve and using it to scribble onto the glass of the window a little circle with a little triangular symbol inside it. Harry didn't know much about Runes or magical symbology, but he decided to hazard a guess that the symbol was some sort of magical rune when it started glowing with a gentle white light.

Professor Vector then took Harry's hand and placed it upon the rune. Its shape was warm, almost hot, against Harry's cold skin.

"Close your eyes," she said, "and feel."

Harry, slightly puzzled, did so, letting his mana sensing abilities unravel around him. He didn't feel anything for a moment.

But then suddenly, a wisp of magic floated around his senses, hauntingly familiar, and lovingly caressed his cheek. A small gust of wind seemed to pass through the tower, ruffling his hair. Harry's throat choked up.

He opened his eyes and realized that his cheeks were wet. Leaning against the wall, Professor Vector was looking at him with a sad smile.

"It's an Arabic runic spell called the _Cahstremend_. The Breath of the Ones Lost. When my father passed away, I was only a few years older than you are now. This helped me make peace with it. One thing you learn as you grow older Mr. Potter, is that the thing about loved ones is…they will always be with you."

Harry could do little more than nod.

"Now, I will see you at the feast won't I?" she asked, ignoring Harry's attempts at regaining his composure.

"Yes ma'am," Harry said quietly, and she left after giving him a small smile. After taking a few minutes to pull himself together, Harry left for the Halloween feast.

* * *

 **I do love that conversation Harry has with Terry in the first half of this chapter. Kinda puts Harry's lack of social skills and the way he sort of looks down on others into the spotlight as one of his biggest weaknesses. Also,** **Dumbledore's role as the 'I know the best' kind of person is starting to bite him in the ass when it comes to Harry. He might not be a villain in this story, but he sure as hell is manipulative.**


	13. Book-I:Tales of Dragons & Trolls

Chapter 12:

Harry ducked into a secret passage behind a tapestry of a Dutch witch singing to a puffskein which connected to a secret door behind the statue of Gregory the Smarmy. Carefully slipping out, he joined the throng of Ravenclaws that were heading towards the Great Hall. Looking around, he found Michael and Terry, and pushed through a few seventh year boys to them.

"Hey Harry! Where were you today? I didn't even see you in class," asked Michael, noticing him.

"Up in the Astronomy tower." Harry replied.

"Detention? I didn't think Professor Sinistra even gave detentions!" Terry asked incredulously.

Harry shrugged. He didn't like lying to his friends. But it was personal. Besides, it wouldn't be a lie if he let them draw their own conclusions would it?

Ping!

 **You're lying by inaction, so try not to be delusional. Skill leveled up!**

 **Lying, Lv- 5 (30%)**

 **This is your ability to lie to people, the higher the level the better the lie and less chance of discovery!**

 **25% chance of success, less based on how extreme the lie is.**

Harry's left eye twitched. The game was becoming a bit too sassy for his taste.

He waved the window away. They had reached the doors of the Great Hall and the prefect pushed the giant double doors open and let them all in.

The delicious smell of baking pumpkin wafted through to nose. A thousand live bats fluttered from the walls and ceiling while a thousand more swooped over the tables in low black clouds, making the candles in the pumpkins stutter. The feast appeared suddenly on the golden plates, as it had at the start-of-term banquet.

They took their seats at their regular spots and they oohed and aahed at the clever decorations. Some of the older students had even decided to wear costumes. Fred and George Weasley were at the Gryffindor table, having put on glasses, painted their hair black and drawn a lightning bolt on their forehead. They shot Harry a pair of wide grins and thumbs up, at which Harry couldn't help but chuckle.

As Harry looked around at his housemates eating and having fun, he smiled disbelievingly. He wasn't feeling down at all. He was having a good time! Maybe Halloween wasn't so bad after all.

In retrospect, he would've decided that he definitely shouldn't have jinxed it. Being fate's premium spitoon, no Luck stat was going to be able to help him.

The doors to the Great Hall slammed open with a bang, and in came Quirrell, sprinting into the hall yelling, his turban askew and terror on his face.

"TROLL! TROLL IN THE DUNGEON!"

"Is it too much to ask for a quiet day?" Harry muttered angrily.

Everyone stared as Quirrell reached Dumbledore's chair, slumped against the head table, and gasped out, "Troll…in the dungeons…thought…thought you ought to know."

He then sank to the floor in a dead faint.

There was an uproar. It took several ear shatteringly loud purple firecrackers exploding from the end of Dumbledore's wand to bring silence to the horde of screaming students.

Harry was frowning. Why would Quirrell be afraid of a troll? Unless…

Harry's frown turned into an intense glower as he slammed his hand onto the table, causing the Ravenclaw sitting opposite of him to slip off his seat with a yelp.

'Of course!' he thought, 'All the teachers would probably go after the troll and that's what he wants. He is probably going to try to use this as a distraction to get the stone!'

"Prefects," Dumbledore instructed, oblivious to Harry's epiphany, "lead your Houses back to the dormitories immediately! Slytherins! Follow the Hufflepuff house to their dormitory."

The Ravenclaw prefect was in his element.

"Follow me! Stick together, first years! No need to fear if you follow my orders! Stay close behind me. Make way, first years coming through! Excuse me, I'm a prefect! No I haven't seen your baboon! Move!"

As soon as they moved out of the Great Hall, Harry ducked behind one of the doors and whispered 'ID Create.'

As soon as he was in his little pocket dimension, he quickly ran up the moving stairs and onto the third floor corridor, where he hid himself behind a large stone griffin a small distance from the corridor entrance where Fluffy was hidden and broke out of the ID.

After a couple of minutes, a figure appeared around the corridor and started walking towards the door that contained Fluffy. It wasn't the turbaned Quirrell though. It was Snape. He promptly checked in on the door, presumably to check if the trapdoor was still closed or not, and started to wait for something.

One more minute passed, and another figure appeared at the end of the corridor.

Harry gritted his teeth as he realized that it was Quirrell this time, and from the way his body tensed up, he wasn't too happy to see Snape. He walked up to the dour faced man and they started talking. He could only hear bits and pieces of the conversation.

Snape's angry voice reached his ears. "What the headmaster is guarding is none of your business Quirinus! Stay out of it or you'll regret it."

Harry looked at his watch, and his eyes widened.

Snape would handle Quirrell. There wouldn't be any stealing happening tonight. Harry had to get back to the tower now. The prefects would notice him missing soon enough. He created an ID and took off running towards the first floor, where a secret passageway was located that led straight to the Ravenclaw tower.

Reaching the first floor, he broke out of the ID and was about to push the right brick to open the passageway, when suddenly he heard voices around the corner.

He stilled. The professors were in the dungeon, and everyone else should be in bed, so who was this? Treading lightly, he shimmied along the wall, trying to stay in the shadows and quietly listened to what was being said,

"But do you have any idea where she is Ron!" a young boy's voice said. It was a student! And Ron Weasley was involved somehow.

"I told you Dean! I can't remember!" Ron's voice replied.

He was tempted to just leave, but this was too dangerous-they were out with a troll around! Harry sighed and finally decided to try and get them to go back to their common room.

"Aren't you supposed to be in your common room? What are you doing here?" Harry asked, coming around the corner and revealing himself.

"Harry! What are _you_ doing here?" Dean asked, startled.

"It's none of his business Dean. We have to keep looking," Ron said defensively, pulling Dean away.

Dean stopped Ron. His eyes hadn't left Harry. "Wait! Ron. He's in Ravenclaw. Her house. Maybe he has some idea."

They told him what'd happened. Apparently, the afternoon had been a Charms class for all four houses, and Ron had somehow ended up sitting beside Hermione, who'd tried to correct his pronunciation of the levitating spell. Defensively, Ron had mouthed her off, and she had run off crying.

She wasn't in the feast when the troll was announced, so Ron, feeling guilty, had asked Dean to come looking with him.

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Save Hermione and defeat the troll! BONUS: Keep the troll alive**

 **Rewards,**

 **6000 exp**

 **10 house points**

 **BONUS Reward: Skill book!**

 **Failure,**

 **Death. Of course.**

 **YES/NO?**

Selecting yes, Harry sighed, "You sure seem to have a habit of touching people's sore spots Ron."

"I said I'm sorry alright!" his face twisted. "She was being all bossy and acting like a know-it-all and I said whatever came to my head! How was I supposed to kno-"

"Harry, we have to go look for her now." Dean interrupted, "Hermione doesn't know about the troll and chances are that it won't take much time for it to find its way to wherever she is. Do your Ravenclaw friends know where she is?"

"I haven't asked, and we don't have time to go back to the common room and ask!" Harry replied. Why in the world did this game not have a mini map?!

"The second floor girls bathroom!" Ron suddenly exclaimed.

"What are you talking about?"

"Hermione is in the second floor girls bathroom. She has to be! I heard one of the Patil twins say to the other that someone was crying in there while coming down to the feast. One of them is in your house isn't she? She's Granger's friend right?" Ron asked frantically.

Harry nodded. "Alright, you two get to the bathroom and warn her. Just get her, run upstairs and hide. I'll keep a lookout in the corridors. If the troll tries to go up, I'll warn you. Keep an ear out for me."

"Harry that's a troll! If you find it you won't be able to get away faster tha-"

Harry cut Dean off, "Trust me on this one. I'm fast enough. And remember, trolls stink like all heavens. So if you smell something, just run."

They nodded and started running towards the stairs.

Ping!

 **You have unlocked a title!**

 **Leader- Allows the user to control his followers easily and gives a +10 to all stats for all followers.**

Harry immediately attached the title onto his status and instantly noticed Dean and Ron become faster, taking longer strides. They were being boosted by his title. He watched them disappear into the second floor and quickly activated his Unicorn Boost perk.

 **Unicorn's Boost- Allows user to run as fast as a unicorn for a brief amount of time. Speed and Usage time upgradable.**

 **Usage time - (Dex + Wis) minutes + (Mana Pool Capacity) seconds**

Looking around once to make sure no one was looking, he zipped down the first floor, checking rooms and corridors faster than any human could move. In almost no time at all, he'd searched the entire first floor.

It was entirely empty.

He was about to go up to the second floor to search it in a similar manner, when suddenly he heard a scream rip through the air.

Quickly zipping up the stairs and into the second floor, he ran full tilt towards where the scream had come from. Looking down a corridor, he saw that Dean and Ron were desperately trying to pull open the bolt on a door.

Harry slowed down and ran at human speeds to them. "What happened?"'

"Harry! Harry, we have to do something to get this door open! The troll is in there!"

Harry looked at them as if they had lost their marbles. "Are you mad? It's locked in, and we don't even have to get away. Find Hermione and let's get out of here. Where's the girl's bathroom?"

Dean's face twisted. Ron's face had lost all color. "Harry, this _is_ the girl's bathroom. Hermione's in there."

Harry paled.

Whipping out his wand, he incanted at the bolt, " _Alohamora_ " The bolt blasted apart and the door banged open. Harry nostrils filled with a disgusting smell, a mixture of old socks and the kind of public toilet no one seems to clean.

Much taller and hunkier than the trolls he'd faced in the ID, this one stood at well above fifteen feet tall, and had his massive club dragging along the floor. And there, beyond the troll, crumpled under a broken sink, pitifully whimpering, was Hermione who was shrinking against the wall opposite to them, looking as if she was about to faint. The troll was advancing on her, knocking the sinks off the walls as it went.

Harry used observe.

 **Mountain Troll**

 **Lv-19**

 **HP:1800/1800**

 **MP:50/50**

 **Str-72**

 **Vit-21**

 **Dex-5**

 **Int-2**

 **Wis-1**

 **Luc-0**

 **A vicious mountain troll that wants to kill anything in its way. It is incredibly resistant to magic, has tough skin and incredible strength but is very dumb.**

Harry tried to use his mana to push blood control. But a window popped open.

 **Magical ward detected, no magic can be done on the target's body.**

He couldn't even blood control the troll! He was willing to bet that Quirrell had warded the troll so that the teachers would have a hard time taking it down using magic.

"Damn it!"

If only he'd been alone, he could have gotten her out with his Unicorn Boost speed. But not now.

"You get her out," he whispered to his companions, "And I'll distract it." They nodded, not being able to think of anything else.

Harry steadied his breath and whipped out his wand. "On my mark then. Three…Two…One…Go!"

The two boys took off towards where Hermione was lying and Harry yelled at the troll, "Take this! _Periculum!_ " A shower of red sparks flew right at the troll's face. The troll let out a massive groan and dropped its club stopping a few feet from Hermione.

" _Spongify_ " Harry cast at the troll's club turning it as soft as sponge. No point in taking any risks with the troll's weapon.

"Come on, run, run!" Harry yelled at Hermione and the two boys helping her up, shooting another spark spell at the troll's face. They dodged the troll's flailing arms and shuffled as fast as they could out of the bathroom.

The shouting and the echoes seemed to be driving the troll berserk. It roared again and started toward Harry, who was nearest and had in his efforts to distract the dull creature, boxed himself in between two stalls and the troll between him and the door. Once they were out, Harry made to move towards the door, when he suddenly realized his situation. He'd have to get out of here.

'ID Create' he thought.

 **You cannot enter the ID when in fight with a boss level enemy.**

Harry gritted his teeth. He couldn't use _anything_ except wand magic now. He couldn't risk anyone else knowing about his powers! The distraction of Harry reading his screen was enough for the troll. It swung its club sideways, managing to hit Harry. The _Spongify_ on it managed to prevent any serious injuries, but it was still enough to send him flying off his feet. He slammed into a stall wall and onto the ground. A wooden splinter dug into his palm, making it sting. "Status" he whispered.

 **HP-255/525**

 **MP-180/300**

Groaning, he looked up and caught sight of the troll raising its club one more time. 'Soft or not, one more hit like that and I'm dead' Harry thought, readying his wand and trying to pull up mana to protect himself.

Suddenly, Ron's voice filled his ears. "WINGARDIUM LEVIOSA!"

The club flew suddenly out of the troll's hand, rose high, high up into the air. Harry, realizing what was going to happen, mustered the strength to raise his mauled wand arm and incanted, " _Lapify,"_ countering the Softening spell's effect and making the club hard again.

It turned slowly over as the troll dumbly stared at the floating weapon, and dropped, with a sickening crack, onto its owner's head. The troll swayed on the spot and then fell flat on its face, with a thud that made the whole room tremble.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Save Hermione and defeat the troll! BONUS: Keep the troll alive**

 **Rewards,**

 **6000 exp**

 **10 house points**

 **BONUS Reward: Skill book added to inventory!**

Harry got to his feet, shaking and out of breath. He'd fought much more dangerous creatures, but this was somehow more difficult than all the others before it. Looking back, his Gamer's Mind easily highlighted a dozen ways he could have easily won. Hindsight was, in his case, twenty twenty.

 **Due to surviving a dangerous situation, your physical endurance has levelled up twice.**

 **Physical Endurance, Lv-11 (12%)**

 **Your Body's durability increased and you take less damage.**

 **33% less damage from physical attacks**

Ron was standing there with his wand still raised, staring at what he had done. Dean was at Harry's bleeding hand with worry.

But it was Hermione who spoke first.

"Is it…dead?"

Harry observed it.

 **Mountain Troll (Status: Unconscious)**

 **HP:1800/1800**

 **MP:50/50**

I don't think so," said Harry, pulling out the splinter in his hand and holding a clenched up piece of his robe upto it to stem the blood, "I think it's just been knocked out. Any of you hurt?"

"Some small bruises. Nothing bad." Dean assured.

Ron chuckled and looked at Hermione, "Guess you were right Granger. It _is_ LeviOsa, not LevioSA."

Hermione snorted, before turning serious. "Thank you. All of you. I don't kno-"

A sudden slamming and loud footsteps made the three of them look up. They hadn't realized what a racket they had been making, but of course, someone somewhere must have heard the crashes and the troll's roars. A moment later, Professor McGonagall came bursting into the room, closely followed by Snape, with Flitwick bringing up the rear.

Professor Snape bent over the troll. McGonagall was looking at Ron, Harry, and Dean, her lips white with fury. "What on earth were you thinking of?"

Flitwick wasn't far behind. They'd never seen him so angry before. "You're lucky you weren't killed. Why aren't you in your dormitories?"

Harry noticed Hermione about to open her mouth. Realizing that this could potentially piss the teachers off, he intervened.

"Please, Professor McGonagall. They were looking for me."

Snape gave Harry a swift, piercing look.

"Mr. Potter!" Flitwick exclaimed.

With Dean's help, Hermione had managed to get to her feet at last. All three of them couldn't keep the shock off their faces.

"I wasn't at the feast because of…what I told Professor Flitwick in the morning about," McGonagall and Flitwick's eyes softened at this. Snape, on the other hand, was almost smirking.

"They noticed I wasn't there when the troll was announced and came looking. The troll had trapped me in the bathroom Professor! If they hadn't found me, I'd be dead now. They were all really brave and Dean distracted the troll and Ron knocked it out with its own club. They didn't have time to find anyone. It was about to finish me off when they arrived," Harry rattled off in a single breath.

Ping!

 **You just leveled up a skill you sly beast!**

 **Bullshitting Lv-5 (5%)**

 **A combination of lying and the truth said in a very confident manner!**

Harry willed the screen away.

"Well….in that case…" said Professor McGonagall, staring at the four of them.

"Mr. Potter, show me your hand." Harry gave his bleeding hand to Snape, and the man muttered a spell over the wound, " _Vulnera Sanentur._ " Much to Harry's relief, it closed up.

Flitwick spoke, "If you're not hurt any more, you'd better get off to your dormitories. Students are finishing the feast in their houses."

They turned to leave and briskly started walking. Dean, Ron and Hermione were giving him impressed looks, when suddenly Professor McGonagall called after them, "Well, I still say you were lucky, but not many first years could have taken on a full-grown mountain troll. You each win five points for your houses. Professor Dumbledore will be informed of this."

"That was…something else. You were amazing. We didn't even get points taken off." Dean said once they were out of earshot.

They reached the intersection where they were to part into their respective dormitories.

"So…you play chess?" Ron asked the Ravenclaws awkwardly. Harry shook his head while Hermione nodded.

"We could play each other someday. Bet you haven't seen wizard's chess yet." Dean offered.

They all agreed, and after some awkward goodbyes, they left for their common rooms. But from that moment on, any animosity that was between them disappeared. There were some things you couldn't share without ending up liking each other, and knocking out a fifteen-foot mountain troll was one of them.

* * *

Apparently a highly dangerous creature loose on Hogwarts Grounds wasn't all that uncommon, since the Forbidden Forest lay inside the Hogwarts wards and the creatures often stumbled into the grounds, and other than the occasional random rumor that sprung up about how Harry had vaporized the troll with his laser eyes, the entire shiding was all but forgotten by the next evening.

His skill book had ended up giving him a pretty good skill.

 **Iron Fist, Lv-1 (40%)**

 **A single, hard as all heck, punch with a 100% accuracy. Remomancy may be used to enhance the punch.**

 **Special moves:**

 **Pyro Fist - A flaming fist of fury to destroy opponents. 50% chance giving Burn status to enemy.**

 **Cost-30MP**

 **Geo Fist - Earth covers your hand, causing damage to be devastating to the opponent.**

 **Cost-50MP**

The weather had turned very cold very fast. The mountains around the school became icy gray and the lake looked like chilled steel. In the morning the ground was covered in frost. Hagrid could be seen from the upstairs windows defrosting broomsticks on the Quidditch field, bundled up in a long moleskin overcoat, rabbit fur gloves, and enormous beaver skin boots.

It was the second of November, a Saturday, and Harry and Hermione were sitting at the Gryffindor table with Terry and Padma. Dean and Ron were setting up his wizard's chess kit. The pieces were yawning and stretching, getting ready for a brawl. Parvati was chatting with Padma and Hermione about something or the other after Hermione had called wizard's chess barbaric, with which the twins wholeheartedly agreed.

The chess board was set up and Harry's pieces started yelling directions at him. Tuning them out, Harry used Gamer's mind to predict Ron's strategies and play. In the end, Ron won, but it was a much closer game than anyone expected.

"Wow Harry! You're almost as good as Bill! We _have_ to play more. The way you took the knight…" But Harry wasn't listening to Ron's ramblings. No, he was staring at the window that had popped up as soon as the game had finished.

Ping!

 **Due to constant use of your brain to play chess with a chess prodigy you have gained 1 Wis and +1 Int!**

Harry grinned like a Cheshire cat.

"Ron, what would you say to a few more games eh?"

A chill passed through Ron Weasley's spine. Gulping, he replied in a much squeakier voice than he intended, "Sure."

They all moved to a table in the library and played chess for the next three hours, which left Harry's Wis and Int at an incredibly high state. Harry had even won once!

 **INT-32**

 **WIS-36**

"And now that my mana regen rate is insanely good, I don't have to worry about collapsing magically drained anytime soon," Harry happily explained to an uninterested Hedwig as he walked towards the Great Hall.

He'd just stepped into the bathroom to relieve himself when a ball of fire burst in front of him, revealing Fawkes with a note tied to his leg.

" _Hello Harry, Hedwig,_ " Fawkes greeted the boy and the bird snoozing in his pocket.

"Hello Fawkes."

" _Letter for you Harry."_

Harry untied the note from Fawkes's leg and watched the phoenix vanish away in another warm burst of flame. He opened the note. In a curly handwriting, it said,

 _Mr. Potter,_

 _Officials from the Ministry of Magic would like to meet you to discuss your guardianship with you, since the Dursleys have been deemed unfit for so. Do not worry, nothing will be finalized in this meeting. Its just to bring you up to speed with the proceedings._

 _Kindly come along to my office at your earliest possible convenience. I hope you are enjoying school so far._

 _Yours sincerely,_

 _Albus Dumbledore_

 _P.S. I enjoy Acid Pops_

Harry sighed. He'd been expecting something like this for a while now. And while he had quite a bit of distrust and anger towards the old headmaster for trying to manipulate him into some sort of dangerous hero testing treasure hunt, he wanted to have a say in choosing whomever he was going to be stuck with for six more summers.

With that thought he walked all the way to the headmaster's office entrance, told the password to the grumpy looking gargoyle, rode up the revolving staircase and knocked on the old oak door.

"Come in Mr. Potter."

One thing was certain. Of all the teachers' offices Harry had visited so far, Dumbledore's was by far the most interesting.

It was a large and beautiful circular room, full of funny little noises. A number of silver instruments stood on spindle-legged tables, whirring and emitting little puffs of smoke. The walls were covered with portraits of old headmasters and headmistresses, all of whom were snoozing gently in their frames. There was also an enormous, claw-footed desk, and, sitting on a shelf behind it, was a shabby, tainted wizard's hat, the Sorting Hat.

The headmaster was standing next to a throne-like chair near the desk, smiling towards Harry and standing beside the fireplace was a portly man in bottle green robes with a bowler hat.

'Must be the Ministry official,' Harry thought.

Upon catching sight of Harry, the man's face lit up and he strode over to Harry and grabbed his hand in a handshake.

"A pleasure, a pleasure Mr. Potter," the portly man said, vigorously shaking Harry's hand. "It's an honor to finally meet you. Cornelius Fudge, Minister of Magic."

Harry's eyebrows rose up, before he almost unconsciously slipped into the dialect he used when talking to Draco Malfoy.

"The pleasure is all mine Minister. But if I may ask, how did the Minister of Magic himself end up in a guardianship meeting?" Harry asked with a small smile.

The Minister's cheeks reddened a bit. "Nothing but the best for you Mr. Potter."

Harry gave another smile. "Thank you Minister. Please call me Harry. I must say, I've been extremely curious about the Ministry ever since I've come back into the wizarding world. I'd love to see how you manage to keep it all working someday."

Out of the corner of his eyes, Harry noticed that the Headmaster was watching them both intently, no doubt taking note of the fact that Harry was behaving like a very different person in front of the minister than he did in front of his friends. Realizing how odd that must appear to the headmaster, he quickly toned his pureblood-speak down a little bit.

Minister Fudge's chest swelled. "I'd be honored to show you one day Harry. Why Albus here is the head of the wizarding judiciary, the Wizengamot! I'm sure he'd be able to tell you more about the ministry than anybody alive."

The headmaster intervened. "I'd be glad to Harry, but I'm afraid we have to get into the issue of your guardianship now."

"Of course. Of course," The minister hurriedly pulled out some papers from his pocket and guided Harry to a chair before taking the other for himself. He then opened a chart and put on his wire frame glasses.

"We will just go through suitable candidates and present you with a list of people who could be your guardians. Nothing final today, just catching you up on what has been happening so far in the process," Dumbledore explained.

Harry nodded and waited for the Minister to start speaking. 'Observe' he thought.

 **Cornelius Fudge**

 **Lv-36**

 **HP-12000/12000**

 **MP-3000/3000**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-10**

 **Vit-12**

 **Dex-18**

 **Int-27**

 **Wis-12**

 **Luc-14**

 **Cornelius Oswald Fudge is a money hoarding corrupt stereotypical politician. He will do anything in his power to mantain his position and wealth. He is a proponent of equality in public but promotes blood privilege in private. He has a wife but continues to have a running affair with his maid.**

 **He thinks Harry is easily manipulated and wants to use him to gain political clout with the light side.**

Harry smiled. The maid information would be useful if the Minister ever decided to get testy with him.

Oblivious to Harry's plans, the minister started naming the possible candidates. "Let's see here, your closest alive blood relatives are through the Potters. Your grandmother Dorea was a Black. Pureblood family, if a bit disreputable. So the most viable guardians would be the Malfoy family. Since Narcissa, Lucius's wife is the niece of Dorea Black. "

"Are the Malfoys the only option?" Harry asked.

"Of course not, they are just the closest relatives you have, Harry. You have blood ties to…" the minister ruffled through some papers. "…the Bones, the Longbottoms and the Greengrasses. I suppose the Tonkses are there too, since Andromeda is Dorea's niece as well. Good family, the Tonkses. Always thought the disownment was a bit too excessive."

"Would Amelia be agreeable to being Harry's custodian?" the headmaster asked.

"As far as my knowledge goes none of them would refuse Harry's custody. It's just the matter of finding where Harry fits in the best."

"The Tonkses have a grown daughter Cornelius. Trainee Auror too. Speaks well of them." the headmaster added. The minister nodded.

"Well Harry, all of these families' children are attending the school here at Hogwarts now except Miss Tonks, and she will be coming here to take some statements on the troll matter later this month. Talk to them, deliberate well, and pass on your preference to me. It will be considered seriously in the process," Dumbledore assured Harry.

"I'll be sure to send Miss Tonks over here soon so that you can talk to her. Of course the entire thing is still in early stages and you will probably only get confirmation in your last days of school." the Minister reminded.

"Of course sir," Harry said.

There were some pleasantries, and a couple of minutes later Harry was walking through the corridors back to his dorms.

Ping!

 **Due to handling a politician with skill, a new skill has been discovered and leveled up!**

 **Politics Lv- 2 (40%)**

 **This is your ability to maneuver in political situations by methods of persuasion, blackmail, guile and manipulation. The higher the level, the more chance of success!**

 **(Lv of Lying + Lv of Bullshitting)% chance of success, less based on how extreme the motive is.**

Needless to say, there was a lot on his mind.

* * *

After the incident with the troll, there had been only minimal sounds coming through Harry's enchanted spy bug. The only thing that ever happened was Hagrid or Professor Dumbledore would sometimes come and feed the giant three headed dog that always stayed in the third floor corridor. Harry wondered sometimes if the poor dog got bored stuck in the same corridor for the better part of a year.

Quirrell was laying low after Snape had caught him on Halloween, which meant that he'd been stuttering in class more than ever. Needless to say, he must have been thinking that Dumbledore was suspicious of him and was laying on his traumatized teacher act as thick as he could.

So, without any demented teachers looking to steal immortality giving artifacts, a lot of Harry's time on the days leading up to the Christmas break was spent in the library, sometimes with friends doing homework or playing chess and gobstones, and sometimes alone looking through books for interesting spells and potion recipes.

It was on one such day that Hermione and Harry were in the library. Hermione was polishing up an essay that was twice its required length and Harry was looking for a way to recreate the Essence of Dittany potion he'd gotten in his loot, since it was the best healing potion he had encountered yet.

"Harry," Hermione suddenly tapped his arm, "Isn't that the groundskeeper Hagrid?"

Harry peered around his stack of books and looked. And sure enough, it was Hagrid, looking very out of place in his moleskin overcoat in between the library shelves.

Harry frowned. The gentle half giant was a lot of things. A good friend, competent Gamekeeper, really good with animals, and a pretty decent tea-brewer for whenever Harry came over.

But a book-reading person he was not.

"Hagrid!" Harry called, "What are you doing in the library?"

Hagrid shuffled into view, barely fitting in between the two shelves, hiding something behind his back. "Jus' lookin'," he said, in a shifty voice that got his interest at once. Harry looked into the beetle eyes and could see that he was lying, he could feel it.

Ping!

 **A new skill has been developed!**

 **Lie detection, Lv- 1 (12%)**

 **You can detect lies said to you, 10% chance of success.**

"An' what're you up ter?" Hagrid looked suddenly suspicious. "Yer not still lookin' fer er…wut we discussed before…are yeh?"

"Of course not Hagrid. That matter is dropped." said Harry, ignoring Hermione's questioning looks. "I do have a few questions however…"

"Shh!" said Hagrid "Listen…come an' see me later, bring yer friend, might as well tell her ter stop 'er from sniffin around. I'm not promisin' I'll tell yeh anythin', mind, but don' go rabbitin' about it in here, students aren' s'pposed ter know. They'll think I've told yeh."

"We'll see you later, then," said Harry. Hagrid nodded and shuffled off to Madam Pince's desk.

"What were you even talking about?" asked Hermione.

Harry sighed and sat down. "Its a long story, but basically, there's something being guarded in the third floor corridor."

She looked at him oddly. "I know."

"Wait. You do?" Harry asked, bewildered. How did everyone know stuff before him?!

"Ron's brothers have been in there. There's a trapdoor under a three headed dog in there. Its basically old news now Harry. No one's been able to get past the dog so no one knows what it's guarding."

"Except that I do." Harry interjected.

"You do? How?"

Harry was a bit worried about sharing too much, but the burden of all this secrecy and someone, possibly Voldemort getting their hand on the Stone was getting to him. Despite his powers, what he needed was an extra set of hands and eyes looking out for him and helping him. So he decided to tell her all he could.

"Hagrid let slip to me in our first meeting that whatever was in there was a business between Dumbledore and Nicholas Flamel."

"Nicholas Fla- wait!" Hermione half-squealed before her voice dropped to an urgent whisper. " _There's a Philosopher's Stone in the third floor corridor_!"

Harry nodded.

"Of _course_ ," Hermione muttered. "The headmaster's office is on the third floor corridor. And it is the one closest to the third floor corridor. If he had to guard something _that_ important, he _would_ put it there."

"Exactly! And that's not all," Harry whispered back, "Professor Snape suspects Quirrell is after it."

Hermione looked at him doubtfully. "Harry…he's Quirrell. I sincerely doubt he could even hurt a fly."

Harry sighed. "It's an act Hermione. A good one at that. Snape warned me about him in my detention. Told me not to go after him. He was pretty serious about it."

Hermione's eyes widened. "If that's true…I believe you Harry, I do. But if he's told you to not look into it, have you considered doing as he said?"

There was a moment's silence.

"What was Hagrid hiding behind his back?" said Hermione finally, dropping the subject of the stone. They both got up and walked over to the section where Hagrid had stood.

"Dragons." Hermione whispered, looking at the bindings. "Hagrid was looking up stuff about dragons. What on earth is he up to?"

* * *

On their way down to Hagrid's hut, Harry and Hermione were discussing what they'd found out in the few hours they had spent before the meeting with the half giant.

They'd asked their friends for what they knew about dragons, and Ron & Terry had known all there was to know. Ron's brother Charlie was a dragon tamer in Romania and talk of dragons was table talk when the second Weasley son was home, and Terry just thought dragons were cool.

When asked about whether there were dragons near Hogwarts, they had replied in negative.

"It's against our laws," Ron had said, "Dragon breeding was outlawed by the Warlocks' Convention of 1709 and anyway, you can't tame dragons enough to keep them near a school, it's dangerous. You should see the burns Charlie's got off wild ones in Romania."

"But there aren't wild dragons in Britain?" Harry had asked.

"Of course there are," Terry had replied "Common Welsh Green in southern Wales and Hebridean Blacks in the Hebrides archipelago. I sure hope Professor Kettleburn takes us there in the third year to see them. I heard he took the third years last year."

When they knocked on the door of the gamekeeper's hut, they were surprised to see that all the curtains were closed. Hagrid called "Who is it?" before he let them in, and then shut the door quickly behind them. Harry's Gamer's Mind instantly noted his paranoia.

There was a blazing fire in the grate. Hagrid had made tea and offered them rock cakes, which they refused, Hermione doing so after Harry stamped on her foot.

"Yeh told her eh?"

Harry nodded to that. He then introduced them both properly.

"So . . . yeh wanted to ask me somethin'?" Hagrid finally asked, after all the pleasantries were done.

"Yes," said Harry. There was no point beating around the bush. Harry needed to know what else was to stop Quirrell apart from a mutated dog on steroids. "We were wondering if you could tell us what's guarding the Stone apart from Fluffy."

Hagrid frowned at him.

"O' course I can't," he said, "Number one, I don' know meself. Number two, yeh know too much already, so I wouldn' tell yeh if I could. That Stone's here fer a good reason. It was almost stolen outta Gringotts. I s'ppose yeh've worked that out an' all? Beats me how yeh even know abou' Fluffy."

"Oh, come on, Hagrid, teachers might not want to tell us, but you do know what telling a school full of children that something is prohibited does." said Hermione asked. Hagrid's beard twitched. They could tell he was smiling.

"We only wondered who had done the guarding, really." Hermione went on. "It's a dangerous artefact after all. We're just trying to make sure there's no chink in the armor, so as to speak. We wondered who Dumbledore had trusted enough to help him, apart from you."

Hagrid's chest swelled at these last words. Harry looked at Hermione, impressed. As far as hidden talents went, she could easily match him in persuading people. Her Politics skill level would be very decent if she had the Gamer ability.

"Well, I don' s'pose it could hurt ter tell yeh that…let's see…he borrowed Fluffy from me…then some o' the teachers did enchantments…all o' the Heads o' Houses" he ticked them off on his fingers, "…an' Dumbledore himself did somethin', o' course. Hang on, I've forgotten someone. Oh yeah, Professor Quirrell."

Harry's blood chilled. "Quirrell?"

"Yea'. Good man Professor Quirrell. Bin teachin' Muggle studies here fer ten years now. Used to come aroun' ter help me take car' of the thestrals back when he wa' muggle studies Professor. Lov'd hippogriffs as well. Then e' wen' off ter Albania for a couple o' months and came back scared and differen' this year. Reckon the vampires got ter him there."

Something wasn't making sense. Dumbledore and Hagrid were describing someone very different from who Harry saw in class. Something had happened in those months in Albania…what, Harry did not know.

Putting that out of his mind, Harry followed the same train of thought he knew Hermione was following. If Quirrell had been in on protecting the Stone, it must have been easy to find out how the other teachers had guarded it. He probably knew everything. Except, it seemed, for Snape's spell, since he was the only one who actually distrusted Quirrell.

Harry suddenly noticed Hermione staring blankly at the fire.

"Hagrid…is that what I think it is?" Hermione asked, and much to Harry's horror, it was.

In the very heart of the fire, underneath the kettle, was a huge, black egg. A dragon egg. Harry observed it.

 **Dragon's Egg**

 **This is an egg containing a Norwegian Ridgeback Dragon. Its adult form resembles the Hungarian Horntail, except for the black ridges on its back, the browner texture in its scales, and its less hostile attitude. It has venomous fangs, and its food of choice is large mammals. The eggs are black, and young Ridgebacks develop the ability to shoot flame earlier than any other breeds.**

Ping!

 **Skill has leveled up!**

 **Observe Lv-6 (50%)**

 **By Observing a target one will get information about said object**

 **-Max HP,MP, stats, info, their emotions and will give their opinion of you.**

"Er…could be."

"Where did you get it Hagrid?" Hermione asked, bending down to examine the egg.

"Won it," said Hagrid tentatively, "Las' night. I was down in the village havin' a few drinks an' got into a game o' cards with a stranger. Think he was quite glad ter get rid of it, ter be honest. An' I've always wanted one. Win-win."

Something didn't click in Harry's head. It was a bit too odd that what Hagrid wanted more than anything else was a dragon, and a stranger turned up who just so happened to have an egg in his pocket.

"Hagrid, I've got to ask you something. What did the stranger look like?"

"Dunno," said Hagrid while stoking the fire, "he didn' take his cloak off. It's not that unusual, yeh get a lot o' funny folk in the Hog's Head, that's the pub down in the village. Might 'ave been a dragon dealer. We talked abou' wut I did 'ere at Hogwarts and what animals I've 'andled."

'Damn it!' Harry thought. Even the dog wasn't a worthwhile protection now. The stranger was sure to have been either Quirrell or Voldemort. And the only thing stopping them now, was Snape's trap and Dumbledore's presence in the school.

 **Accurate deduction from given facts was made, so +1 to Int!**

"But what are you going to do with it when it's hatched?" said Hermione, oblivious to the connections Harry had made.

"Well, I've been doin' some readin', said Hagrid, pulling a large book from under his pillow, "Got this outta the library - Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit - it's a bit outta date, o' course, but it's all in here. Keep the egg in the fire, 'cause their mothers breathe on I em, see, an' when it hatches, feed it on a bucket o' brandy mixed with chicken blood every half hour. An' see here - how ter recognize diff'rent eggs - what I got there's a Norwegian Ridgeback. They're rare, them."

"Hagrid, you live in a wooden house!" Hermione pointed out.

But Hagrid wasn't listening. He was humming merrily as he stoked the fire.

Harry decided that it was time to intervene. Harry could be harmed both physically and legally if someone found out about this. He owed it to his friend to stop him from doing this. He flipped through the book looking for something that'd help. It didn't take long for him to find it.

"Hagrid…You're hurting it."

That got Hagrid's attention. "Say wha' Harry?"

"I said you're hurting the dragon Hagrid. It says in this book that dragon's mothers breathe fire on them. That's dragon fire Hagrid. More than a hundred times hotter than a house fire. That's beyond hellfire level stuff. The baby dragon could hatch up all crooked or even dead if you keep trying to hatch it as you've been doing," Harry pointed out.

"Give that to me!" Hagrid snatched the book from Harry and read the paragraph about improper hatching. His eyes teared up.

"Hagrid, we've got to get this egg to a proper dragon handler," Hermione said worriedly, "Harry! Ron's brother is a dragon handler isn't he? I bet he wouldn't refuse if you wrote to him."

Hagrid looked at him hopefully, and Harry agreed.

The next day, Harry had asked Ron for Charlie's owl post address, giving the excuse of asking some questions. He'd sent off a letter to him via owl, pleading on Hagrid's and his own behalf. Then all there was to do was wait for the reply.

Soon, the classes started to heat up real good, with the teachers starting to teach faster and faster in anticipation of the end of the first term. It was a few days before they received a reply from Charlie.

Harry, Hagrid and Hermione huddled together around the fire together to read the note.

 _Mr. Potter,_

 _Thanks for the letter, and I'd be glad to take the Ridgeback egg, but it won't be easy getting him here. I think the best thing will be to send him over with some friends of mine who are coming to visit me next week. Every Hogwarts alumnus that's here in the preserve likes Hagrid, and my friends do too, but they mustn't be seen carrying an illegal dragon._

 _Could you get the dragon egg up the tallest tower at midnight on Saturday? They can meet you there and take it away while it's still dark._

 _Send me an answer as soon as possible._

 _Yours truly,_

 _Charlie Weasley_

 _P.S. Please keep Ron out of this. Plausible deniability and all that. Destroy this letter._

It was with some difficulty that Harry later convinced Hermione that he would need to handle this alone and that she'd only slow him down and make the entire thing even more risky for all of them.

And then the night came. It was a very dark and cloudy night and Hagrid had the egg packed up in a warm container, all ready. Harry carried the heavy container all the way into the castle, till he was out of sight of the half-giant's hut. Then he called for Hedwig, who flew quietly out of the forest and grabbed onto his shoulders, flaming him with the egg straight to the tallest tower, the location of which Harry had her visit and memorize the night before.

Once there, he immediately sent Hedwig back to the Ravenclaw Tower, not wanting her to be seen or somehow sensed by any of Charlie's friends. It was incredibly cold, so he pulled out his wolfskin jacket and put it on before settling down for a long wait.

Out of sheer boredom, he started dropping into Sneak mode and out, trying to level up that skill.

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up due to repeated use!**

 **Sneaking, Lv-11(21%)**

 **Allows you to sneak up on someone.**

 **60% chance of not getting caught.**

 **60% chance of critical strike.**

About ten minutes later, four broomsticks came swooping down out of the darkness.

Charlie's friends were a cheery lot, not asking any questions and not being unnerved despite Harry's jacket which made him look much taller and concealed his face in shadows. They showed Harry the harness they'd rigged up so they could suspend Norbert's box between them. They all helped buckle Norbert safely into it and then shook hands with him, and at last, the dragon was going off into the night…going…going…and gone.

Suddenly a window popped up.

 **Hostile detected behind you!**

"Magical Law Enforcement! Stay right where you are and do not move." Harry froze, cursing himself for not being aware of his surroundings as he watched the dragon disappear into the clouds.

"Slowly turn around." came the order from the Auror.

Harry slowly turned around. The Auror was female and didn't seem to be much older than the seventh years that Harry had seen in school. She was pointing a wand towards Harry, the tip of which was glowing an ominous red.

She kept the wand pointed at him and came closer to him, and with her free arm patted his arms and legs, checking for any hidden weapons. Finding nothing, she pulled on the hood of his jacket. It refused to come off.

Harry absently noted that this must be the Trainee Auror Tonks that Dumbledore and Fudge were talking about on the day of his guardianship meeting. She was supposed to come to Hogwarts soon, but Harry hadn't expected her to be here at midnight!

Angrily, she snapped at him, "You're coming with me. Professor Dumbledore will be interested in whatever you were doing here. Take off the hood. Now!"

Harry had never been more thankful for his wolfskin jacket's identity hiding properties than he was now. He activated his bloodlust skill and put it into his voice " **Let me go.** "

The pink haired girl flinched unnaturally and stumbled back, and Harry frowned. This wasn't his magic. Something was wrong with the Auror. But he didn't have time to mull on it. Using the moment's distraction to twist on the spot and take a running jump straight off the tower, Harry slipped into an ID mid-air, managing to escape.

Nymphadora Tonks stood frozen to that spot. She had recognized that voice.

* * *

Harry stared at the letter in his hands. It was the twenty third of November, and apparently, telling Malfoy to go report to his father that he had Harry's trust was having unforeseen consequences.

 _HP,_

 _I have passed on to my father what we had discussed I would pass on. His reply was positive and he has asked me to give the following message to you at an opportune moment. He had wanted me to give it to you at the start of Christmas break to catch you off guard, but I figured a month's time should help you prepare. Here it goes,_

 ** _Heir Potter_**

 ** _With great honor, we would like to request for your presence on the Christmas evening this year for the Annual Malfoy New Year's Ball._**

 ** _The venue for the said event will be at the Malfoy Manor in Wiltshire and dress code will be formal robes. We wish that you will find time for you to be present on the party. Please let us know whether you can or cannot join us for whatever reason._**

 ** _Hoping to receive an acceptance letter at your earliest convenience and to see you in the ball._**

 ** _Best Regards,_**

 ** _Lucius Malfoy_**

 ** _Head of The Most Noble House of Malfoy_**

 _I recommend you accept. The party won't be very interesting, but many high ranking officials and powerful people would be present and would want to meet you. Remember, should father realize that you are unsympathetic to his cause, he will destroy your reputation amongst the upper echelons of the ministry and try his best to eliminate any possibility of you ever becoming a political enemy, so I recommend you practice your act in front of a mirror beforehand._

 _I will warn you Harry, my father is not an easy person to fool. From what I've been seeing, you intend on playing the political field and while your ambitions are not yet known to me, throwing my lot in with someone the likes of you is not the worst I could do._

 _Oh, and your so-called 'fun spoiling' in the first flying class has made you a bit unpopular with a lot of first years of my house. I will not be able to talk to you in public for a while until all this dies down. If you need to contact me, do so by owl._

 _DM_

 _P.S. The caretaker IS a squib. I'm tempted to be angry, but honestly that was positively Slytherin. Don't screw it up at the ball and I will let this one slide._

Sighing, he put the letter into his inventory.

* * *

 **There we go. I'm pretty happy with this one. Finished off Ron's little arc and had Tonks's second encounter with her hero, who she doesn't know is Harry. That is a storyline that I am really excited to work on. Tonks is one of my favourite characters, and while I'm not doing romance this early in the story, I think that fleshing out her motivations for becoming an Auror and tying that in with Harry is going to set up for a great storyline to come.**


	14. Book-I:Five Days of Christmas

Chapter 13:

 _Harry let loose a stream of fire from his hands at the hundreds of zombies that surrounded him before dipping into his inventory and pulling out his bow before snapping off arrow after arrow at the horde full of zombies, significantly thinning their ranks._

 _In the very next movement, he turned the bow back into its ring form onto his finger before turning around and sending a flaming punch right into the zombie that was sneaking up behind him. Within moments, the chain reaction of flaming zombies cleared out, and the little opening in the woods was cleared of any and all undead._

 _Then he pulled Gandiva back into its bow form and notched an arrow, getting ready for a legion zombie to form._

 _It never formed._

 _Instead, a wind started flowing all around him, rippling through all the dust that coated the clearing Harry stood in. A cloud formed above him, a sentient, conscious and viscous mass of pitch black smoke that had glowing red tendrils of lightning floating around in it._

 _Harry, curious, sent a small burst of fire at it. It dissipated before even reaching the cloud. Harry stared at his hand shocked. His fire had never been weak. Ever._

 _The black cloud erupted out a wave of force, pushing Harry onto the ground. His bow landed on top of him. Harry tried to push himself up, before realizing with a burst of panic that he couldn't get up Gandiva grew heavier on him. Harry started gasping for breath. The weight of the bow was starting to crush him. He could hear his own ribs shattering, unable to support the force that was being put on them._

 _And just as the crushing weight was about to cave in his chest, everything around him went black._

Harry woke up with a start, gasping. The wisps of the nightmare he'd just had fluttered right at the edge of his memory, evading his grasp. Shaking his head and using his sheets to wipe off the sweat on his face, he woke up Hedwig, who grumpily wriggled into his pocket and went back to sleep. With his secret super-bird hidden, he parted all of the bed-curtains.

Once the holidays had started, Harry had found himself in the strange position of being the only Ravenclaw first year who was staying in the castle for Christmas. He had the dormitory to himself and the common room was far emptier than usual, so he was able to get the good armchairs by the fire, soaking up the heat while looking out of the frost covered windows. He'd spend hours having whimsical little conversations with Hedwig, teaching her the basics of how English worked. He could already almost hear the faint mental sounds, and every time Harry heard her, he'd happily feed her a piece of apple.

On Christmas Eve, Harry had gone to bed looking forward to the next day of celebration and food and the fun. He'd sent off some books and chocolates to all of his friends and a magical dog whistle to Hagrid, all of which he'd acquired by the assistance of the incredibly resourceful Messrs Weasley & Weasley.

But for some reason, the small pile of presents at the foot of his bed surprised him more than it ever should have.

Most of it was chocolate of course. Curious about the properties of chocolates in the game, Harry used observe on one of the tiny wrapped globes.

 **Magical Dark Chocolate: Food/Crafting item**

 **Restores 20HP & 100MP**

 **Permanently gives +2 levels to kissing when eaten for the first time.**

Harry's eyes widened before he quickly took inventory of all the chocolate he'd received. There were at least a hundred individual pieces of chocolate in there. And if each of them could restore that much mana, then they would be an essential item in any battle or grinding session he'd have in the future. Harry gleefully stuffed all the chocolate into his inventory, and the last piece he popped into his own mouth, happily rolling it over with his tongue and sucking on it.

Ping!

 **Skill created and leveled up!**

 **Kissing, Lv- 2 (90%)**

 **It is what it is. The higher level you are the better kisser you are. And remember practice makes perfect. Chocolate**

 **Your level is kissing leave the person unfazed.**

Harry stared at that for a second, eye twitching, before resolutely deciding not to think too much about it and waving the window away.

Grinning in anticipation of his next present, he picked up the top-most of the bigger parcels. It was wrapped in thick brown paper and scrawled across it was _To Harry, from Hagrid_. Inside was a roughly cut wooden flute. Hagrid had obviously whittled it himself. Harry blew it, producing a noise that sounded a bit like an owl. Hedwig peeked her head out of Harry's pocket and trilled at the flute, as if looking for another new friend to make.

Harry chuckled.

Next was a very neatly wrapped parcel. Harry tore it open to reveal a large box of homemade fudge from Mrs. Weasley, who he remembered meeting at the train station. He resolved to send her a thank you note. Like he had with the chocolates, he used observe on the fudge as well.

 **Homemade Fudge: Food**

 **Restores 100HP & 10MP**

Impressed at the HP restoration stats, and after trying one of the fudges, Harry decided to be much nicer to Ron in the future. He'd have to swindle the recipe out of him somehow.

With the fudge set aside for later consumption, this left only one parcel wrapped in a silvery, almost shiny wrapping paper. Harry picked it up and felt it. It was very light. He unwrapped it. Something fluid and silvery gray went slithering to the floor where it lay in gleaming folds.

Worried that some Death Eater might have sent him some sort of magical goo monster, Harry used observe on it.

 **Cloak of Death : Armor/Crafting item**

 **Also called Cloak of Invisibility. This is a cloak that can render the wearer invisible, and is one of the Deathly Hallows. According to legend, whoever united it with the other two Hallows, the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone, would become the Master of Death. It does not fade with age and will resist all damage to itself.**

 **+50 levels to Sneak when equipped**

Harry picked the shining, silvery cloth off the floor. It was strange to the touch, like water woven into the material, marvelous to the look and texture. Harry threw the cloak around his shoulders and looked down at his feet, but they were gone. Eyes widening, he dashed to the mirror. Sure enough, his reflection looked back at him, just his head suspended in midair and his body completely invisible. He pulled the cloak over his head and his reflection vanished completely.

"This is amazing," Harry whispered to himself. But who could possibly send something like this to him?

Looking around, he noticed a piece of parchment amongst all the wrapping paper. He pulled off the cloak and stuffed it into his inventory before grabbing the letter. Written in narrow, loopy writing he had never seen before were the following words,

 _Your father left this in my possession before he died. It is time it was returned to you._

 _Use it well_

 _Merry Christmas_

There was no signature. On a whim, he decided to use observe on it.

 **Albus Dumbledore's Letter to Harry Potter**

 **Its a letter written in parchment from Albus Dumbledore to Harry Potter.**

Harry was left feeling very strange. Had the cloak really once belonged to his father? And why would Dumbledore have given it to him now?

He could just have wanted to give it back, but why would he wait so long. One thing Harry knew for sure was that Dumbledore wanted him to go into the third floor corridor to participate in the test he had planned. So a very possible reason could be that he was encouraging Harry to break rules and enter the third floor corridor undetected.

Of course it still could be both.

Harry sighed. When had school turned into a place where he had to look out for manipulation in every action that he took. Shaking his head, he decided to wait till the night before testing the cloak out and went down the stairs to head to the Great Hall for breakfast.

"Merry Christmas Harry!" Ron, the only one of his friends who stayed over for Christmas break, said as he joined Harry when he halfway to the Great Hall. He was wearing a maroon jumper that looked very warm.

Together they made their way to the Great Hall, where Fred, George and Percy were sitting at the Gryffindor table. Ron and Harry joined them and started stuffing their faces.

"Keep sending Ron as much chocolate as you did Harry and he'll convince Mum to start sending Weasley jumpers to you too," Fred said after they had finished stuffing their faces with pie.

"You bet I will!" Ron said, gobbling chocolate frogs like they were going out of fashion.

"Then consider it done," Harry said, laughing at Ron.

They played games for hours, chess, gobstones, anything really. Even Percy had joined into the cheering for Harry when he had finally defeated Ron in a game of chess. They were having a grand old whale of a time.

And then came the feast. Oh goodness the feast!

Harry had never in all his life had such a dinner. A hundred fat, roast turkeys, mountains of roast and boiled potatoes, platters of chipolatas, tureens of buttered peas, silver boats of thick, rich gravy and cranberry sauce and stacks of wizard crackers every few feet along the table. Harry pulled a wizard cracker with George and it didn't just bang, it went off with a blast like a cannon and engulfed them all in a cloud of blue smoke, while from the inside exploded several live, white mice.

Flaming Christmas puddings followed the turkey and Percy nearly broke his teeth on a silver sickle embedded in his slice. Harry watched infinitely amused as Hagrid kept getting redder and redder in the face as he called for more wine, finally kissing Professor McGonagall on the cheek, who, to Harry's amazement, giggled and blushed, her top hat lopsided.

And after full day of goofing about and a scrumptious meal of turkey sandwiches, crumpets, truffle tripe, and Christmas cake, everyone felt too full and sleepy to do much more and parted ways to their respective towers.

It had been Harry's best Christmas day ever.

As he lay in his bed, feeding bite-sized pieces of the pie to Hedwig, he was finally free to think about the cloak. His father's... this had been his father's. He let the material flow over his hands, smoother than silk, light as air. No matter what Dumbledore's intentions might have been, he had done Harry a great service by returning to him this piece of his parents' past.

Resolving his will, he put on his robe and picked up the phoenix lying beside him to put her into his robe's pocket. "Come on Hedwig! Let's go exploring."

He put on the invisibility cloak and disappeared from view. Suddenly, Harry was hit with a heady feeling. He was undetectable and unseeable in this cloak. No more running or hiding or sneaking anymore. The whole of Hogwarts was open to him. Places he had never even thought he could access were within his reach. Restricted section! Runes ritual room! He could see it all!

Excitement flooded through him as he stood there in the dark and silence. He could go anywhere in this, anywhere, no-one would know.

With a grin, he started to run out of the dormitory. And he suddenly stopped. The sound of his shoes against the floor echoed across the Ravenclaw tower.

This was a problem.

Quickly, Harry took off his shoes and cast " _Quietus_ " on them before putting them back on. There was no sound coming from them anymore. Satisfied with them, Harry ran out of the Ravenclaw tower and down the stairs and set off straight towards the library.

On the way, he pulled up his sneaking stats, just to check whether the cloak was doing its job.

Sure enough,

 **Sneaking, Lv-61(1%)**

 **Allows you to sneak up on someone.**

 **95% chance of not getting caught.**

 **95% chance of critical strike.**

He ducked into an ID, just to avoid any risk of detection, and ran all the way to the library. For some reason, the ID library was always empty of books. Perhaps it was some sort of mechanism to prevent him from cheating.

When he slipped out into the real world, the library was pitch-black and eerie. There was no Madam Pince dusting the shelves and no students whispering and reading. It was just shelf after shelf of books and it all looked a bit haunting. It was the first time Harry had ever been uneasy at the Hogwarts library.

Harry lit a lamp to see his way along the rows of books. The lamp looked as if it was floating along in midair, and even though Harry could feel his arm supporting it, the sight gave him the creeps.

The Restricted Section, that tempting store of forbidden knowledge, was right at the back of the library. Stepping carefully over the small divide that separated these books from the rest of the library, he held up his lamp to read the titles.

They didn't tell him much. Their peeling, faded gold letters spelled words in languages Harry couldn't understand. Some had no title at all. One book had a dark stain on it that looked horribly like blood. The hairs on the back of Harry's neck prickled. He caught a faint whispering was coming from the books, as though they knew someone was there who shouldn't be.

He had to start somewhere. Setting the lamp down carefully on the floor, he looked along the bottom shelf.

A thick glowing book with peeling binding named _Venificus Arithmantica_ caught his eye. Harry had always been interested in the applications of Arithmancy and decided that this could be interesting. He pulled it out; it was very heavy; and setting it on his knee, let it fall open.

A piercing, bloodcurdling shriek split the silence. The book was screaming!

An alarm! Harry realized with a start. Someone must be coming! "ID Create!" he spoke urgently and disappeared into the Instant Dungeon.

Safe from any responders to the alarm, Harry snapped the book shut, trying to shut it up, but the shriek went on and on, one high, unbroken, earsplitting note. Angrily, he slammed it against a rock. It shut up. Harry opened it up carefully, bracing for the shriek to start again. It didn't. But a window popped open.

 **You have obtained a skill book! Would you like to learn the skill, 'Arithmancer'?**

 **YES/NO?**

Sure. Why not. He'd probably not be able to grind it a lot until he got up to third year and joined the class, but there was no harm in learning the skill.

Ping!

 **You have obtained the skill, Arithmancer!**

 **Arithmancer, Lv-1 (0%)**

 **Allows the user to use the arts of Arithmancy to create and modify spells. Further uses include prediction of the future through high density probability matrices and being classified as a magical nerd.**

Nodding and waving away the screen, he walked to a small corridor outside the library and intoned "ID Escape". The moon outside lost the blood red sheen. Harry headed for his next target, considering that this one was entirely bust, which was the Runes Ritual Room, or R3 as the odd looking lazy sixth year that had told him about it called it. Supposedly it had a full library full of recipes for rituals just laying around. One of them was supposed to give you the power of free flight and another could give you laser eyes.

Harry wanted laser eyes.

* * *

Harry had searched through three entire floors slowly and patiently and three more with super speed. Now, as he was searching through the seventh and final floor, which was usually abandoned, Harry was becoming more and more sure that the sixth year was taking the piss out of him.

Ping!

 **Accurate stuff dumbnuts, take +1 to Int.**

Resolving to hex the living heavens out of that sixth year if he didn't find the room in the seventh floor, Harry angrily stomped into the left corridor of the floor, and he ground to a halt as if he'd smacked into a brick wall.

Smack dab in the middle of the narrow left corridor was a seventh year Ravenclaw girl prefect on the floor and the Head Boy Robert Hilliard on top of her. Judging by their ruffled state of dress and the moans that were rippling through the corridor, Harry could've bet that they were getting a bit frisky in their Prefect shifts after setting up a silencing charm at the end of the corridor.

Harry's eyes widened as the Head Boy's hands creeped up the girl's skirt. An "eep!" escaped from Harry's mouth before he could stop himself.

"Who's that!" They'd heard him. Both of them got up to their feet, pulling out their wands and smoothening their clothes. "You heard that too right?" asked Hilliard to the girl prefect, who Harry had now placed as Marlene McKinnon. "I did! Rob! Someone could have seen us. I was telling you! In the middle of the corridor!"

"You weren't exactly not enjoying it were you?" Robert replied with a smirk. McKinnon punched his arm."Now let's go check."

They started holding their wand lights up and looking around. They couldn't see him, of course, but it was a narrow corridor and if they came much nearer they'd knock right into him. The cloak didn't stop him from being solid. He slammed a hand over his own mouth and pushed himself against the wall, staying absolutely still.

They passed him, and finding nothing, started talking again. Harry craned his neck trying to hear what they were saying.

"…I could do a _Homenium Revelio_ I suppose. At least we'll know if anyone's here." It was McKinnon who said this. Hilliard nodded.

'Oh no,' he 'd heard of the spell! If they cast it not even his cloak would be able to stop them from finding him.

'ID Create' he thought, wanting to escape and a window popped up.

 **You cannot enter the ID when in extreme proximity to a supercharged magical ley line nexus. Error Code : RoR**

What the heck was that supposed to mean! What was an error code? He needed to find someplace to hide! Real quick!

His hand brushed against something. He looked at it he saw a door handle! Looking behind him, he saw a door. He could have sworn that it wasn't there a second ago!

Seeing McKinnon lift her wand through the corner of his eyes, Harry panicked and opened door ajar and squeezed through it, holding his breath, trying not to move it too much, and to his relief, he managed to get inside the room without their noticing anything. He had just closed the door when he heard McKinnon cast the spell. He waited with bated breath.

"Nobody. Must have been Filch's cat." Hilliard's voice came through the door as they walked straight past, and Harry leaned against the wall, breathing deeply and quietly, listening to their footsteps dying away. That had been close. It was a few seconds before he noticed anything about the room he had hidden in.

It was a large, almost empty room, with only a few flickering torches for light. In fact, the only outstanding thing about this place was that it was somehow exactly what Harry had in mind when he was desperately hoping for a place to hide. It was almost as if the universe had read his mind and decided to gift him with what he wanted.

But what was more was that Harry's senses were being overloaded by the sheer magical currents in this place. Harry could _feel_ his Mind Arts skill grow in power just by sensing the magic in here.

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up due to overuse!**

 **Mind Arts, Lv-6 (7%)**

 **The act of magically navigating through the many layers of a person's mind and correctly interpreting one's findings, either with others or one's own self. One of the rarest magics today due to its regulated teaching.**

 **Cost-40 MP per use**

 **Branch A -Magic Sensing-Allows you to sense flowing currents of magic that are in flux.**

This was no ordinary room. Harry had stumbled across something big.

His gaming powers had pulled off some amazing things. Maybe…they could pull this off as well. Focusing on all of the room, Harry said as clearly as he could, "Observe"

Harry felt his observe happen this time. He felt his mana explode outward and sweep the room, interacting with its own mana and drawing information from it. A window popped up.

 **Room of Requirements**

 **Created by Rowena Ravenclaw, this room can transform itself into whatever the witch or wizard needs it to be at that moment. It cannot create food and has many limitations placed on it by its creator. Any item summoned or created in the room cannot be taken outside the room and it cannot summon living creatures. Its position on a ley-line nexus grants it almost unlimited potential otherwise.**

 **It only appears when the user is in great need of it, but can also be called for by walking three times infront of it and focusing on what is needed.**

Harry gasped. This…this…there were ways to use this room that Harry couldn't even comprehend. He was struggling to piece together two strings of thought in his head.

Suddenly, his Gamer's Mind brought out a wisp of a memory from what seemed like ages ago.

" _Each of us has a haven inside Hogwarts. In each of those are our greatest achievements. Our greatest creations. Find them and they will be your next clue. Your path will lead you to the unknowns we once traveled in our primes in each of our own quests for knowledge and power."_

Harry's eyes widened. He'd done it! He'd found his first founder's haven! And it was Ravenclaw's!

"Now how do I get this room to give me my next clue?" Harry wondered.

An idea crossed his mind, stupid, but simple enough to work…he decided to give it a shot.

"I _require_ Rowena Ravenclaw's clue!" he said out loud to the room, focusing on the lines the founders had told him. It was an idea, despite being a pretty dumb one, and more importantly, it worked!

A small three-legged, claw-footed stool flowed into existence in front of him, and a small piece of paper appeared on top of it. Harry picked it up to read it.

 _Help shall always be provided at Hogwarts to those who ask for it._

And underneath it in underlined script,

 _Look for the most maleficent of the fae_

* * *

The next day passed with Harry doing any and all research he could about fae, or fairies, as they were known by modern wizards. There was surprisingly little information about them in the library and in the Ravenclaw common room shelves, since they were mostly a French and Irish group of species that were rarely seen in the modern day England and Scotland.

Right now, Harry was out after curfew under his cloak again, returning from checking on a false rumor that the Weasley twins had told him about there being a colony of fae living in the outer edges of the Forbidden Forest.

"Mrrowwrrrrr" came a sound from something behind him. Harry's lips curled with disgust.

And somehow, he had managed to get Mrs. Norris pursuing him.

In an effort to evade her, he ducked into the next unused classroom around the fourth floor corridor. He took a look around the room and prepared to leave when suddenly his eyes caught something that was propped against the wall.

It was something that would have fit in an Arabian Nights tale as a princess's favorite item of choice, for it indeed was a mirror, and it was a magnificent one, as high as the ceiling, with an ornate gilded frame, standing on clawed feet. There was an inscription carved around the top.

 _Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi._

His Gamer's Mind instantly recaliberated and deconstructed the almost offensively simple code and decoded it.

 _-Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi._

 _-Erisedstraehruoytubecafruoytonwohsi._

 _-Ishownotyourfacebutyourheartsdesire_

"I show not you face but your heart's desire," Harry whispered. Was it some sort of magical artifact? Something out of fairy tales? Curious, Harry used Observe on it.

 **Mirror of Erised**

 **It shows not your face but your heart's desire.**

Harry stared at the game screen flatly.

"Incredibly helpful, thank you," he muttered and started inspecting the mirror after putting his cloak into his robe pocket. As his fingers glided over its surface, he noticed something odd about it. Its surface felt almost liquid to touch, and had no glass over the surface like all mirrors did. It was as if someone had crafted a mirror with just quicksilver.

Finally, he decided to risk whatever the mirror did to a person, hoping Gamer's Mind would protect him, and stepped in front of it.

He had to clap his hands to his mouth to stop himself from screaming. He whirled around. His heart was pounding furiously, for he had seen not only himself in the mirror, but a whole crowd of people standing right behind him.

But the room was empty. Breathing very fast, he turned slowly back to the mirror.

There he was, reflected in it, white and scared-looking, and there, reflected behind him, were at least ten others. Harry looked over his shoulder, but still, no one was there. Or were they all invisible?

'Oh no no no.' Harry thought, 'This is not a horror movie. This is my real actual life. This can't be happening! This can't be happening!'

"Hello! Er…spirits of this room? Can you listen to me? I come in peace. Please don't tell me you've been creeping on me my whole life…" he spoke loudly like he'd seen the people do in one of those tv shows where they talked to ghosts.

And then he remembered the inscription.

"Oh." Feeling incredibly stupid for doing that. His heart's desire…he wondered what it could be.

He looked in the mirror again. A woman standing right behind his reflection was smiling at him and waving. In her arms was another small child. And in the background, there was a white blur zooming around that Harry recognized as Hedwig.

She was a very pretty woman. She had dark red hair and her eyes…

'Her eyes look like mine, Harry thought, edging a little closer to the mirror. Bright green, exactly the same shade, and then he noticed that she was crying, smiling, but crying a bit at the same time. The tall, thin, black-haired man standing next to her put his arm around her. He wore glasses, and his hair was very untidy. It stuck up at the back, just as Harry's did.

Harry was so close to the mirror now that his nose was nearly touching that of his reflection.

"Mom?" he whispered, "Dad?"

They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes, other slightly crooked noses, and even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry's knobby knees.

For the first time in his life, Harry was looking at his family.

The Potters and the Evanses smiled and waved at Harry. He stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy and half terrible sadness.

How long he stood there, he didn't know. The reflections did not fade and he looked and looked until a sudden noise outside in the corridor brought him back to his senses. He couldn't stay here, he had to find his way back to bed. He tore his eyes away from his mother's face, whispered, "I'll come back," and hurried from the room.

The next day he spent entirely restless and in the night he came back.

The third night, he found his way more quickly than before. He had been running so fast the soles of his shoes were worn. He slammed the door shut and not seeing anything else, made his way to the mirror.

And there were his mother and father smiling at him again, and one of his grandfathers nodding happily. Harry sank down to sit on the floor in front of the mirror. There was nothing to stop him from staying here all night with his family. So what if they were a reflection? He could finally see them. Tell them how much he'd always thought of them and pictured them in his head and never truly believed in the lies Dursleys had told him.

A flicker of mana behind him forced him out of his thoughts. A window popped up.

 **Area Sense : Someone is behind you**

A voice came from behind him.

"So…back again, Harry?"

Harry felt as though his insides had turned to ice. He looked behind him. Sitting on one of the desks by the wall, with his legs swinging back and forth, was none other than the wizened grey haired figure of Albus Dumbledore. He must have been invisible…or maybe Harry had walked straight past him, so desperate to get to the mirror he hadn't noticed him.

Ping!

 **Skill levelled up!**

 **Area Sense, Lv-2 (0%)**

 **Allows the user to get a sense of the area around him/her. A more permanent version of the Supersensory Charm. The higher the level the more information is provided.**

 **Effective until 30 feet.**

"I didn't see you, sir." Harry finally said warily.

"Strange how nearsighted being invisible can make you," said Dumbledore, and Harry was both relieved and worried to see that he was smiling.

"So," said Dumbledore, slipping off the desk to walk over sit on the floor with Harry, "you, like hundreds before you Harry, have discovered the delights of the Mirror of Erised."

"I didn't know it was called that, Sir." Harry lied.

"But I expect you've realized by now what it does?" Dumbledore said.

"It…" Something told Harry to be honest this time. "It shows me my family sir."

"Ah. I wish it was something as benign as that Harry. But it's a bit more than that." Dumbledore said, peering into the mirror, as if seeing his own desires in there.

"Do-do you see your family in the mirror too sir?" Harry asked curiously.

"I suppose I do. In a way. A curse of living as long as I have Harry, is that you must have just as long a list of loved ones to miss. I can only feel saddened that someone as young as you must bear a burden even I struggle with," Dumbledore said after a small pause, and Harry felt a bit sorry for the man.

"I…never knew any of them." Harry said, lifting his hand up to where her mother was and placing it on the mirror, "I wish I did."

There was a moment's silence before Dumbledore spoke.

"Then perhaps this old man can help you. I didn't know many from your mother's family, but I was familiar with most of the Potter family at some point or the other. Describe to me who you see Harry, and I will tell you of them the best I know."

And the old man and boy sat cross legged there in front of the mirror, the boy describing to the headmaster how each person looked, and the headmaster telling stories of how he knew them. Of how he had made fun of Harry's grandfather Charles Potter once and he had in return hexed him into vomiting seagulls, after which they'd become fast friends. And how Charles's father Henry, who had been a widower, had always been kind to him. He spoke of Dorea and how much she loved flying, which was quite against the traditions of women not flying in those days, and he spoke of Lily's passion for Charms and James's talent for mischief and Transfiguration.

It was a wonder of ironies that in each in their mind they were wondering if the kindness and good they saw in each other was a just a façade to hide something darker

After they had finished talking, they lapsed into silence for a while. Harry looked at Dumbledore, whose slightly wet eyes saw something else in the mirror, something just as personal as Harry. Harry decided not to ask what.

After a while, Dumbledore looked at him curiously, "What do you think of what the Mirror of Erised shows us all, Harry? Everyone who has seen it has had a unique opinion on what it does. I do wish to hear your interpretation of it" said Dumbledore gently.

Thinking about it a bit, Harry said slowly, carefully choosing his words, "Well the inscription is a reversed sentence which says that it shows us what we want…whatever we want…however…I haven't seen myself in the mirror get full grades in Charms or Transfiguration, so it must be more specific than that. Why my parents and not me winning the House cup?" he mused.

"Brilliantly reasoned," said Dumbledore "You've hit it just short of the mark. It shows us nothing more or less than the deepest, most desperate desire of our hearts. You, who have never known your family, see them standing around you."

He sighed.

"However . . . this mirror will give you neither knowledge or truth. Men have wasted away before it, entranced by what they have seen, or been driven mad, not knowing if what it shows is real or even possible."

Harry stared as the Harry in the mirror played peek-a-boo with the little child in his mother's arms as Hedwig flew out from the background and alighted on his mother's shoulder.

"The Mirror will be moved to a new home tomorrow, Harry, and I ask you not to go looking for it again. If you ever do run across it, you will now be prepared. It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live, remember that. Now, why don't you put that admirable cloak back on and get off to bed?" Dumbledore said with a soft smile.

Questions flew about in Harry's head. Had Dumbledore been here every night Harry had been here? Had he seen him at his most vulnerable? The outpour of emotions that seeing his parents had brought out in him was proving a strain on him, and he needed some respite.

Harry stood up and activated Gamer's Mind.

The image in the mirror in front of him flickered and changed. It showed a new scene now.

It was Harry. But he was older. His eyes were glowing, one of them an unnatural green and the other a bloody crimson. He stood in a small room with a window floating over his head.

 **Harry Potter**

 **LV- ∞**

There were dozens of lifeless unmoving bodies scattered across the room. Stifling a horrified gasp, Harry saw the faces of Hermione, Terry, Ron and Dean amongst the many faceless corpses.

And on the stone walls of the room he stood in, written over and over in dripping viscous blood, were the following words.

 _What's mine is mine and mine and mine_

 _and mine, and mine, and mine_

 _Not yours_

Harry staggered back a bit, before trying his best to smile at Dumbledore, putting his cloak on and walking out of the room as fast as his legs could carry him.

He would never return again.

* * *

The events with the Mirror of Erised had forced Harry to confront himself about a lot of things.

He'd asked himself the question of how far he would be willing to go to be the best. How much would he sacrifice in the name of becoming the best? Already he'd seen that he could risk his own life in the name of getting a level up. How long before he reached a position where he risked others? How long before he lost sight of his initial motive of protecting what his parents had given their lives to save…

How long before he turned himself into an invincible madman?

He'd already felt the insanity. He'd felt how sometimes he suddenly felt a burst of uncontrollable rage that…almost seemed to come from…beyond him.

Harry closed his eyes, and his Gamer's Mind flashed back to the moment in August when he'd killed two men in pure unadulterated rage. Sighing, he gently massaged his head, pushing those memories out of his mind.

And then there was his own uncontrollable need for secrecy.

The way he'd kept anything and everything he'd found out about Quirrell close to his chest…not sharing anything with those who could do something about it was one example of that. He didn't have any solid evidence, but he could bet that the fact that Quirrell was drinking unicorn blood would turn a few heads at the DMLE.

Another example was Hedwig.

He had looked up the rules regarding familiars in the school. He could easily have Hedwig move about freely and without any restrictions by acknowledging her as his familiar in public. Hogwarts school rules allowed that. Heck it'd probably end up making people adore him even more. But he didn't. Throughout most of the term, he'd tried everything and anything to keep her a secret.

"No" he muttered to himself, "Hedwig is different. She's too young. And revealing her to the world would make people see me as some sort of savior. They'd expect me to solve all of their problems. That, I'm not ready to do."

 **Due to being able to differentiate between objective and non-objective actions you have gained +1 to Wis.**

He looked over at the white phoenix perched on the headboard of the bed who'd perked up upon hearing her name. She flapped her wings and flew over to where Harry sat and let out a questioning trill.

"Just thinking girl," said Harry with a sad smile. Hedwig nipped at his fingers before flapping up onto his shoulder and nuzzling her head in his hair.

At least Hedwig thought he was still worthy enough, thought Harry with a smile.

'But the secrecy needs to go,' Harry thought resolutely as he set Hedwig back on the headboard. Tomorrow, he decided, would be the day he'd send all the information he had about Quirrell and the Stone to Amelia Bones, and let the proper authorities handle the Stone and its thief.

It was time to wash his hands of this mess of a situation. He picked up a quill and started writing.

 _Madam Bones,_

 _This is to draw to your attention that something nefarious has been happening at Hogwarts and I wish to let the proper authorites kno..._

He wrote and rewrote the letter all night, and knowing that Harry Potter's word would be taken more seriously than any anonymous tips, signed his own name under it.

The next morning, he went to the owlery and posted the letter using a school owl, not wanting to send Hedwig somewhere she'd never been.

Then he put it out of his mind and spent his time playing in the snow with Ron and his brothers. It wasn't until dinnertime came around that anything interesting happened.

The house tables had been moved to the sides and smaller round tables were placed all around the hall for the very few students that were staying for the holidays. There were the majority of fifth and seventh years who, nervous for their OWLS and NEWTS, had stayed behind. But the majority of the first years, including all of Ravenclaw had gone home.

The teachers that stayed for the Christmas holidays sat all around the hall, some conversing with fellow teachers and others talking to tablefuls of students. All the hustle and bustle served as background noise for Harry as he finished up his homework on a table.

He was just putting finishing touches on his Potions essay when someone took the seat next to him.

Harry's blood chilled as he realized who it was. It was Quirrell. He had a goblet of wine in his hand. Smiling, he turned to Harry, "H-Hello Mr P-Potter." he said.

Harry forced a smile, "Hello Professor. How are your holidays going?"

"Ve-Very productive Mr. P-Potter. And y-yours?"

"Fine as well Professor. Can I help you with something?"

"W-Well its m-more of a matter of if I can h-help you or not. I'm afraid I found s-something of yours j-just outside the school," said Quirrell before dipping his hand into one of his numerous pockets and pulling out something. He put it on the table between them.

It was a letter.

Not just any letter, Harry realised, noticing the handwriting on it. It was the same letter he'd sent to Amelia Bones this morning.

Harry immediately grabbed it and stuffed it into his pocket.

Quirrell took a sip of his wine, "I m-must admit t-to opening t-the le-letter Mr. Potter. I assure you, t-the stone is p-perfectly safe. Many great witches and wizards including m-myself have contributed to its p-protection. I m-must also say that I n-noted you have s-somehow gained an im-impression that some thief wants to s-steal the S-Stone. I must c-confess to have n-no idea what you were w-writing about. W-would you c-care to enlighten me?"

"I think you know exactly what I was writing about Professor," Harry said, his tone flat. He had been very clear about his suspicion of Quirrell in the letter.

 **Warning:Bloodlust detected!**

"I d-don't," Another sip. Harry suddenly noticed that it wasn't wine in the goblet, but a silvery-white liquid.

Blood, Harry realized. Unicorn Blood.

"Of course should such a thief exist, it would definitely not be me. But I would imagine that he would be extremely displeased at your unnecessary interference, and would most definitely take steps to put you in check. Perhaps you should consider staying out of his way and hope that this would discourage him from…taking care of you," Quirrell's voice had lost all of his stutter and had gained a terrifyingly calm tenor.

"I'm not afraid," Harry said fiercely.

Quirrell took one last sip from his Goblet and vanished it with a wave of his hand, not acknowledging Harry's statement.

"Hogwarts is a place full of dangers Mr. Potter. Who knows what would happen if one of your friends suddenly made an explosive potion? Or even fall down one of the moving stairs? One must always strive to be…c _areful_ where they step…around here," he said simply, before he got up from his seat beside Harry and headed back towards the table Professor Sprout was sitting at.

Despite his light tone, Harry got the statement loud and clear. If he interfered, then everyone he held dear would face the consequences.

And there was nothing he could do about it.

* * *

Harry had spent most of the remaining time leading up to the New Year holed up in the tower, cursing himself for not sending Hedwig or asking Fawkes to deliver the letter.

Now he had put his friends at risk!

It took him quite a while to get back into form, deciding that worrying about it wouldn't do anybody any favors. He put the Stone out of his mind, and focused on other things. And meanwhile, a lot of the students had returned from their homes after celebrating Christmas to celebrate New Year with their friends.

Thus, on the evening of the New Year's Eve, Harry, dressed in his best robes and with Gamer's Mind on full blast, knocked on the familiar office door of Professor Severus Snape, who was supposed to be escorting him to the Malfoy Annual New Year's Ball.

To Harry's surprise, the door was opened not by Professor Snape but the familiar blonde haired Draco Malfoy. Harry nodded at him, receiving a nod back in return before being let into the office.

They were not alone.

Harry felt a bit stupid for not having guessed that there would be other children invited to the Ball.

In the center of the office stood Pansy Parkinson and Millicent Bulstrode, clearly in the process of comparing nails and dresses. Theodore Nott and Blaise Zabini were standing off to the side, doing nothing in particular. Draco had gone over and was whispering something to Crabbe and Goyle. And finally, standing with Tracy Davis by the fireplace was infamous ice queen of Slytherin, Daphne Greengrass.

Harry was the only non-Slytherin in the room. He fingered the cufflinks he'd borrowed from Stephen, feeling a little bit out of place amongst the group. They were all very well dressed. And they were all looking at him with raised eyebrows. Clearly, his presence was a surprise to them.

"So what're you doing here Potter? I didn't think Malfoys had started inviting half-bloods to the Ball." Pansy Parkinson said snidely, looking to get a rise out of him.

Draco stayed quiet, although he did give Pansy the stink eye for the jab at the Malfoys, Theodore Nott sneered and the rest of the mostly Slytherin group started muttering to each other in whispers, looking through the corners of their eyes at Harry.

"Didn't you? That's nice Miss Parkinson." Harry said.

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up!**

 **Taunt, Lv-2 (40%)**

 **You can cause your opponent to lose their cool and do something stupid.**

 **10% chance of working**

Pansy looked completely thrown off at her insult being dismissed like a toddler's aimless ramblings. She was about to say something when suddenly the door banged open and Professor Snape strode in, his cape billowing around him of its own volition. Harry took a moment to wonder at how its mere existence seemed to be a flip of finger to the laws of physics. Maybe there was a charm for that.

"Silence!" the dark robed man snapped. A hush fell over the room. "Listen to your instructions carefully. You will all maintain a proper and appropriate demeanor all throughout the ball. The first thing you will do when you're out of that floo is that you will find your families and let them know you have arrived. Twenty minutes after the new year bell hits, you will all regroup near the fireplace and we will return back to Hogwarts. And remember. I will not have my evening spoiled by any of your mindless shenanigans. Is that understood?" Snape said, his voice severe.

"Yes Professor" came the reply from every one of them, including Harry.

"Good. Now line up," Snape said, passing a piece of paper and a handful of floo powder to each one of the students. "Now I assume most of you have gone through the Floo before with your families. If this is your first time flooing alone, listen carefully. Step into the fire and speak carefully. Try not to end up in the wrong grate. If I am forced to go and fetch you back I will be…most displeased."

Harry walked into the fireplace, ducking to avoid hitting the mantle. He stared through the green flames at the faces of the students getting ready to follow him through. Looking down at his hands at the floo address on the piece of paper Snape had given him, Harry clearly intoned the two words.

 _Malfoy Manor_

And he was off.

* * *

 **Yep! Green Lantern easter egg stays in. I really like it and I think that it signifies the risk of the exorbitantly risky Molotov Cocktail that is Harry's mind and Voldemort's soul and the Gamer's mind all stuck in that little head. Hope you enjoyed the chapter.**


	15. Book-I:The Maleficent Fae

Chapter 14:

Harry sipped on the mulled apfelwein as he looked around the ballroom.

After they'd arrived, everyone had gone after their parents, and Snape had sulked off to greet people around the hall. Harry had picked up his drink from the bar, carefully avoiding the age line drawn around the part serving alcoholic beverages, and sat down at one of the stools and turned towards the raised podium at one end of the hall, upon which Lucius Malfoy was addressing his guests.

"...most productive year in terms of ministry legislation. And finally, the House of Malfoy thanks you for your presence at this celebration on this evening. May all of you have the best of new years. Please, enjoy."

The blonde haired man stepped down from the podium to the applause of the crowd. The instruments started playing themselves and the dulcet tunes floated through the massive hall as people started mingling with each other.

Harry caught sight of Lucius Malfoy coming towards him.

Snapping down Gamer's Mind and planning out what he'd say, he fixed a small smile on his face, prepared to act as much like a trainee dark lord as he could.

'The things I do in the name of helping people,' he thought to himself.

In preparation, he cast an observe.

 **Lucius Malfoy**

 **Lv-36**

 **HP-14400/14400**

 **MP-8000/8000**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-18**

 **Vit-25**

 **Dex-28**

 **Int-39**

 **Wis-20**

 **Luc-21**

 **Lucius Abraxas Malfoy is a dark wizard and blood supremacist. He has a distinct dislike for light oriented politicians. He is an active politician himself and is one of the richest purebloods in Europe. Lucius has been collecting political capital since his master died, hoping for a new dark leader to come take his spot. He is a decent duelist and is an alcoholic.**

 **Lucius is hoping Harry will prove open and accepting to dark side ideology and politics. If that fails, he wishes to manipulate him to get the support of the Potter name.**

Gulping down the remaining apfelwein in his flute, Harry placed it on the bar and got to his feet to shake hands with the host of the evening.

"Good evening Mr. Malfoy." Harry said, taking the man's tight handshake the best he could. "Please give my compliments to Mrs. Malfoy, sir. Everything looks fantastic tonight."

"I'm sure Narcissa will be pleased to hear that Mr. Potter. So, how has your first year back in the wizarding world been?" Lucius asked, his tone pleasant. But Harry's keen eyes easily caught the subtle hunger in the aristocrat's eyes. He could tell that he was looking for some remnant of his old master in the one who vanquished him.

"It's a lovely place, Mr. Malfoy, although I haven't seen much of it yet. I hope to rectify that next summer," Harry said.

"And Hogwarts? I hear that you are doing quite well in your classes."

"I suppose so. There are better students, of course, Draco's pretty good, and Hermione Granger does better than even me."

Lucius's smile fell. "Ah yes. About the…muggleborn. Draco tells me that you've grown close to that particular witch from your house. You see Mr. Potter…outsiders to our ways won't benefit you much in our society. Perhaps you should choose your friends more wisely?" His tone was distinctly colder this time.

Harry forced himself to keep smiling. It was time to break out a new trick he'd been practicing for a while now.

He'd seen how Dumbledore's magic seemed to make people around him lightheaded sometimes. Hermione had once said that being as powerful as he was, Dumbledore's magic had an almost physical presence, affecting those around him without the Headmaster even knowing. Harry had thought about how useful a tool that would make for intimidation and influence.

Unfortunately, Harry's magic hadn't even fully matured yet, so he couldn't do anything like that.

Fortunately, he soon realized, he could fake it.

Harry sent out his mana into the bloodstream of Lucius Malfoy, sweeping through his veins and leeching into his heart…and he pulled, activating blood control.

It was difficult, much more difficult than any blood control he'd ever done, because of both Malfoy being a grown wizard with his own magic, and because what Harry was doing needed much more finesse than anything he had ever done previously.

What Dumbledore's magic did unconsciously, Harry was doing consciously, and with not an insignificant amount of concentration.

Lucius's blood flow slowed ever so slightly in his veins, triggering the symptoms of low blood pressure. This started making him lightheaded, just as it would if he was in front of someone with a staggering amount of magical power.

"I've never really appreciated the way some people presume to tell me who I should and should not talk to…it is so…presumptuous, wouldn't you agree?" Harry asked, using his blood control to drive in his point.

Lucius's knees almost buckled and he swayed on the spot. "My goodness…" he whispered, almost inaudibly. And just as fast he'd started it, Harry ended his blood control.

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up due to highly controlled use!**

 **Branch A-Remomancy has evolved into 4 separate Branches!**

 **Wandless Magic Lv- 10 (11%)**

 **Allows you to control your magic in without a conduit. You can try to use it in anyway you wish and it will obey your every command. Has various discoverable branches.**

 **Branches:**

 **Hydromancy: Allows you to control water in any form.**

 **Cost-70 MP per minute**

 **Pyromancy: Allows you to control fire in any form.**

 **Cost-60 MP per minute**

 **Geomancy: Allows you to control earth in any form.**

 **Cost-90 MP per minute**

 **Aeromancy: Allows you to control air in any form.**

 **Cost-80 MP per minute**

Harry waved the screen away and fixed a smile on Lucius, who was still composing himself.

"O-of course not My L-Mr. Potter." Lucius stuttered out, in reply to Harry's question.

Harry had caught his slip. He'd almost called him 'My Lord'. Harry couldn't help but feel simultaneously disturbed at being compared to his parents' murderer and victorious for having successfully intimidated one of the most powerful men in the country.

There was a moment's silence.

"So have you thought of how you'll handle your Wizengamot seat Mr. Potter?" Lucius asked, once he had caught his breath.

"Wizengamot seat?" Harry asked, genuinely curious. The Potter family didn't have one as far as he knew.

"You aren't aware?" Lucius seemed a bit surprised. "The Wizengamot granted the Potter family a seat due to exemplary services towards the wizarding world rendered by you, Harry James Potter, in 1983, two years after you vanquished the Dark Lord."

"Well… that was very kind of them. Is there any possible reason you could think of that I wasn't told of this via some correspondence after I came back to the wizarding world?" Harry inquired, noticing that Lucius was feeling far more forthcoming with information now.

"I suppose a lot of people expect you to take up that seat upon your maturity, until which it'll remain inactive. That could have been a reason why you weren't informed. I'm unsure of any other reasons...but I could look into it for you," Lucius offered.

Harry smiled. "That'd be very kind of you, Mr. Malfoy. And as for your question, I suppose I do intend to take a few years to just learn about this new world before entering into any political scene. In the meantime though, I'd love to come to the Wizengamot someday and see how it all works."

"Of course. It'd be my pleasure to show you around," Lucius said with a smile, "But for now, I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me. Please do enjoy the evening." He turned around and walked off to greet the man Daphne Greengrass stood with.

Harry smiled and took down Gamer's Mind. That had gone remarkably well. He'd managed to get an in on the Dark Side. That was going be extremely helpful in the process of completing the work of his parents and helping the wizarding world.

He was going to take out blood purism from the inside.

As Harry downed another few mocktails, more than a few people came up to him to say hello and shake his hand. Harry happily tolerated them since they were all quite polite about it. Some others who came over were foreign diplomats who wanted to introduce themselves to Harry. Once, even the Minister came over to talk to him, of which there were a few pictures snapped by the press photographer who was making rounds of the ballroom.

It wasn't too long before another Malfoy came over, this time the younger one.

Looking a bit worried, Draco asked, "What did you say to father? He's been acting a bit strange. Did he suspect anything about you not being a…you know…"

"No. It's all fine. I handled it," Harry simply said.

"That's great," said Draco looking visibly relieved, "Now listen, there's this backstage room in which the performing band is getting ready right now. It's Celestina Warbeck and the Snidgets, and they want to meet you! Do you want to go?"

Harry, who was genuinely starting to get bored, agreed as fast as he could.

Together they went out of the ballroom through a side corridor and looped back towards the room assigned to the band to practice and lounge around in. Once they reached the door, Draco made some excuses about how he had to entertain guests and went back off to the ballroom. Harry opened the door and stepped in.

It was unlike anything Harry had ever seen.

The entire room was lit by a floating neon pink orb of light. One corner of the room was filled with instruments spewing out music, and the other was so filled with smoke that Harry could barely see through it. It seemed to be taking the shape of random animals before dissipating. In the middle of the room, just over a dozen people were dancing like a single undulating mass.

Lounging on a divan to the side was the woman who was the most famous of the three in the band, Celestina Warbeck. Unlike the other two who seemed to be all ready for the night ahead, her dress for the performance at the ball lay to the side and she was clad in a translucent nightgown. Her head was nodding in sync with the music.

Her face lit up in a smile when she saw Harry. "Harry! Come on over now!" she said, patting the space beside her.

He went over and took a seat beside her on the divan, watching the people dancing on the floor. "So why did you call me over, Miss Warbeck?" he asked the witch, who was now sipping on a tumbler of firewhiskey.

"Just thought you'd be getting bored of old men trying to talk you to death. Merlin knows that I have some idea how bad _that_ can be," she chuckled, "Its New Year's Eve, you should be having fun."

"Well, thank you very much for that," Harry said with a smile, "So…I'm here…what do I do now?"

She eyed her tumbler before looking at Harry. "Wanna take a sip."

Harry raised an eyebrow. "Forgive me, Miss Warbeck, but I'm extremely underage."

"Come on Harry. There's a lot crazier stuff to do in the Wizarding World than drink underage. The last guy I slept with used to turn his clothes into stone just to try to bulk up. Did it because I told him he was a fat slob once. Wanted to impress me," Celestina said.

"So did he? Impress you?"

"Oh hell no. I left him three days after the first time he did it. Too desperate. So, don't you wanna have your first drink?"

"I think I'll pass," Harry replied as he laughed out loud.

Their conversation was getting the attention of the crowd of people. The music had been turned down and one of the girls in the band came to the forefront with a grin on her face.

"Wait a minute. You're telling me that you, Harry Potter, haven't had a drink? Ever?"

Harry nodded warily.

"This is a momentous occasion then. Let's make it a bit more interesting for you. Most of us got knocked out when we had our first drink of firewhiskey, right?" There was a collective mumble of agreement from the crowd. "So what I propose is that if our Boy Who Lived here manages to down FIVE shots of firewhiskey on his FIRST time drinking and not pass out, he gets a kiss from Tina. Tina, are you game?"

Celestina nodded with a grin.

The crowd started chanting, "DO IT! DO IT!"

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Impress the lady and the crowd.**

 **Rewards,**

 **3000 exp**

 **A kiss**

 **Failure,**

 **Don't be a pussy. Accept the quest.**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry shrugged. Why the heck not. Pressing yes, he activated Gamer's Mind and made a quick little plan of how he would do this without getting hammered out of his mind.

"Alright. Alright. I'll do this. But I'm not going to have to be the one to explain to Professor Snape what happened if I pass out."

Harry almost chuckled as the crowd immediately quietened.

"Nonsense. Even if you pass out, we'll just throw a sobering potion down your throat and Enervate you. You'll be fine." Celestina assured as the crowd cheered back up again.

A small table was set up and five shots of pure firewhiskey were poured out. Harry was feeling a bit unsure of what he was doing when he saw the smoke rise out of the shot glasses.

Steeling himself and pulling up the skill he planned to use, he picked up a glass and raised it. "To new adventures on a new year," he toasted and downed it.

His insides exploded with a burning sensation and he could feel the smoke pouring out of his ears. He was getting light headed. Fast. Deciding that this might be the right time to start enacting his plan, he opened up his minimized status.

 **Harry Potter Lv- 10 (Status: Intoxicated)**

 **HP:525/525**

 **MP:300/300**

He poured his mana into his own blood and activated his healing ability.

Ping!

 **Do you wish to heal - Status:Intoxicated**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry mentally chose yes and felt the burn and the lightheadedness fade away.

"Still going hun?" Celestina asked.

Harry nodded and picked up the next glass and downed it before healing himself again. Then he downed the next one and once more, healed himself.

Feeling a bit courageous, he picked up the last two shot glasses and he threw them in both at once, this time, not healing himself. The crowd went wild. Beside him, Celestina grinned.

"A deal's a deal," she said, before grabbing his head and pressing her lips against his own. Riding high on the alcohol, Harry kissed back, pressing his own lips against her soft full ones. The crowd's cheers faded into the background and Harry's Gamer's Mind decisively cataloged kissing as one of the best things he'd ever done.

It was a few seconds before she pulled back with a small smirk. "Not bad Harry. Not bad at all."

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Impress the lady and the crowd.**

 **Rewards,**

 **3000 exp**

 **A kiss**

Ping!

 **Skill has leveled up twice due to snogging an experienced kisser!**

 **Kissing, Lv- 4 (2%)**

 **It is what it is. The higher level you are the better kisser you are. And remember practice makes perfect.**

 **Your level is kissing leaves the person in a pleasant mode.**

Harry waved it away, and feeling a bit embarrassed, he pulled up his healing status and healed his intoxication. The music turned back to loud and the crowd started dispersing.

"Thanks," he said.

"They'll be opening the dance floor soon. You should get back to the ballroom." Celestina suggested with a smile.

"Dance floor! I have to dance?" Harry asked, his expression horrified.

Celestina laughed. "Yup. Enjoy the show hun."

Harry made his way out of the room and back to the ballroom, slightly dazed. Making his way straight to the bar, he chugged down six of the light apfelweins.

'That was an experience and a half,' he thought to himself as he saw Draco weave through the guests and come over to him.

"Hey, Harry. What'd they want you for?"

"Oh you know, this and that. Nothing too exciting," Harry said with a small smile.

Draco looked at him strangely. "Okay…anyway, better find a partner Harry. Father's going to be opening the dance floor."

"Who're you with?" Harry asked.

Draco sneered, "Looks of a harpy, voice of a banshee, and the attitude of a veela. Guess who?"

"Pansy Parkinson? Well good luck with that," Harry said chuckling, "So, do you know anyone who is free and not too old for me?"

Draco looked around. "Well…there's Bulstrode…but I doubt you want to be anywhere near _her_. And…there's Bones I suppose."

"Bones? I didn't see her coming with us." Harry looked at where Draco was looking. The redhead Hufflepuff was standing right next to the dance floor on the other side of the hall, wearing a flowing yellow dress.

"She wasn't. Most of us Slytherins don't stay at home for New Years. Something about Christmas being time for family and New Years for friends. She came over with her aunt. I reckon you should ask her. She usually doesn't dance though."

Harry was a bit curious about what the Bones were doing at a Ball for the more traditionalistic side of the wizarding government. "Thanks, Draco, I think I will."

"You do that. I'm off to spend seven minutes in hell," muttered Draco and walked off sullenly.

Harry made his way to where the redhead was standing, while Lucius introduced the band and kicked off the dance with his wife. The music started flowing and people started shuffling onto the floor and dancing.

"May I have the pleasure of the first dance Miss Bones?" he asked Susan, getting her attention.

She blushed a little, noticing who it was. "I'd love to…but I erm…can't really dance. I'd probably step all over your toes."

"Oh come on, it'll be fun. We'll make a competition out of who steps on the other's toes the most." Harry said with a chuckle.

Susan smiled and gave her hand to Harry, who led her onto the floor. Carefully dedicating most of his Gamer's Mind's resources to mirroring the movements of the much more experienced dancers around him, Harry and Susan with him fell into the repetitive movements of a comfortable ballroom dance.

"You aren't half bad!" Susan spoke, impressed. "I heard people say that this is your first ball."

"It is. I'm just a quick learner I suppose," Copying the man two spaces away from them, Harry picked Susan and spun around, before falling back into pace.

"I hate to be cliche, but what's a girl like you doing in a place like this?" Harry asked.

"Well…Auntie supports a lot of Mr. Malfoy's legislations, so we're usually invited every year."

"She supports his bills? But I thought with Mr. Malfoy's…dubious past record, your Aunt wouldn't wish to associate with him?"

"He was cleared of all charges Mr. Potter. My Aunt doesn't associate with criminals," Susan's voice had turned a bit frigid.

Harry immediately backtracked. "Oh no. My apologies if that came out wrong. Most people at school tend to portray your family's seat as a neutral legislator. I was just a bit surprised by the fact that she leans towards the blood traditionalists more. And please, call me Harry."

"Oh…it's alright I suppose. You can call me Susan."

"So Susan, how come the Bones seat supports blood traditionalist policies?"

"It's…it's hard to explain. I doubt I could really explain it all that well," Susan hesitated.

"Try me. I'm sure you'll do fine."

She was quiet for a second, thinking. And then she said, "Have you heard of Lisa Turpin, that Ravenclaw girl that doesn't talk to anyone?"

Harry nodded, wondering where this was going.

"Her mother works two seven-hour shifts a day to pay for her Hogwarts fees. They're a poor family and don't get any benefits or help, despite her father giving his life in the last war as an Auror commander. Auntie helps out sometimes. Dumbledore did too I think. But there's only so much they'll accept." Susan said.

They spun one more time, keeping in sync with the music.

"Now picture this for me Harry, Lisa's mother, working as hard as she does, barely gets enough salary to fully pay her rent and get her daughter to school, while someone like Hermione Granger, whose parents can easily afford Hogwarts from their muggle healer salary, gets to have a tuition-free education. How is that not unfair?" Her voice had lost any traces of nervousness as if this was something she was incredibly passionate about.

"And she's not alone. There are many wizarding families that are very old but aren't all that financially stable. Purebloods aren't all just rolling in old money. A lot of them work really hard for their living and most of the taxes they pay go towards funding free education for muggleborn kids who usually don't even need it."

Harry opened his mouth to protest that quite a few muggleborns needed it.

"I'm not saying that it's wrong Harry, or that it should be stopped," she said, seeing him about to say something, "I'm just saying that the scholarship should be more case-by-case based. And that it should be offered to all wizarding students who need it, not just muggleborns."

"How did this even get passed? I mean, it's clearly not equal nor unbiased." Harry questioned. He was _eleven_ , and _he_ could see holes in that law.

Susan shrugged. "I don't know, but what I do know is that while a lot of people in the traditionalistic side are blood supremacists, for most people in the Neutral side it's never been about blood. It's been about equality. About making the scales stay in balance and not tip either way."

"You should definitely be a politician," Harry commented after a moment's silence, "And I mean that as the best of compliments."

"I have to. Heiress Bones remember?" Susan reminded, bringing up her hand to show Harry her finger, upon which was her Heiress ring.

"Well, any political system would be richer with someone as passionate about equality as you are." Harry complimented, making Susan blush. They danced in silence for a few more minutes before they both retired from the floor and went separate ways after some small pleasantries.

Harry walked out of the ballroom to get some peace and quiet, all the while thinking about what he'd talked to Susan about.

The laws were geared to be too favorable towards the muggleborns at this point, making the wizardborns resentful of newer people who ended up getting much more benefits in the world than they did.

And when they attempted to set stuff back into balance, they usually ended up pushing the scales too much in favor of wizardborns, making muggleborns resentful in turn.

It was almost as if the entire system was rigged to destabilize any form of equality and stability. There was a serious problem with the wizarding government that needed to be fixed.

Lost in thought, Harry stopped when he suddenly realized that he'd come upon the end of a corridor. Looking up, he saw a massive, non-moving portrait of a regal looking woman seated on a massive gilded throne.

She wore an embroidered dress that would have looked gaudy on any other, but just looked beautiful on her. In one hand she held a silver staff with rubies and emeralds in it and with the other she held her delicate looking wand. Her face bore a haughty look, as if she dismissed anyone who admired the portrait as unworthy of her attention.

There was a plaque under the portrait. Harry read it.

 ** _Morgana Le Fay_**

 ** _The oldest known ancestor of the Malfoy family, Morgana Le Fay was a famed enchantress and magical arts practitioner of her times. Born and raised in France, she is one of the most powerful witches to ever live. She was believed to have passed away in the early 3rd century, but much like her famous rival, Myrrdin, her grave has never been found._**

A wavering voice spoke from beside him.

"She was a sight to behold wasn't she?" Harry looked to see who it was.

A really old looking woman with a cane had come up to stand beside him. "It's good to see people as young as you interested in the history of our kind. Ever since that imbecile Binns has started teachi…"

Harry wasn't listening to her. Something had clicked in his mind while reading the plaque.

"Morgana Le Fay" Harry whispered, making the connection with Ravenclaw's clue that he had uncovered from the Room of Requirement.

 _The Most Maleficent of the Fae . . . Morgana the Fae._

* * *

Back at Hogwarts, a few days after New Year's day, all the students had arrived back from the vacation and life resumed as normal for the students of Hogwarts. Except for our Harry Potter.

Sitting in his four-poster bed with the curtains drawn, Harry finished writing all the stuff he knew about the founders in a notebook. Stuffing it into his inventory, he decided to go for a small grinding session. It had been a while since he'd leveled up.

He did some calculations in his head. He needed just below 20,000 exp to get his new level up. Killing all those zombies before a legion zombie formed gave him roughly 10,000 exp and the legion zombie gave him 5000 exp. So if he killed two legions and all the smaller ones, he'd easily get a level up.

Nodding to himself, he grabbed Hedwig, dropped into an empty ID and ran all the way to the Forbidden Forest, before dropping out of the ID and releasing the phoenix to go play with the animals in the forest.

Taking a deep breath to steady himself, Harry prepared himself to fight and clearly intoned, "ID Create: Zombies."

The sky turned red and all the noise of the wildlife around him ceased.

He quickly equipped the appropriate title.

 **Apprentice Zombie killer- 30% greater attack and defence when dealing with the undead. +5 to all stats when dealing with the undead.**

He pulled out Gandiva from his inventory, notching a fire arrow and prepared to roast some undead flesh.

Hearing a rustle behind him, he swiftly turned and let an arrow fly. While his accuracy wasn't exactly top-notch, the zombies were coming at him from all directions. Thus, whichever way the arrow went, it ripped through a bunch of zombies.

Harry let out a wave of fire towards one side and used his geomancy powers fill the ground with spikes on his other side, clearing out scores worth of zombies at the cost of a significant portion of his mana.

He looked around and saw an entire army full of zombies hobbling towards him from behind a group of trees. Popping a few pieces of chocolate into his mouth to refill some of his mana and dropping Gandiva back into ring form onto his finger, he prepared another one of his moves.

Activating his unicorn boost perk, he ran full speed straight through the ranks of the limping zombies, with his hands spewing fire like hoses, burning dozens of zombies into crisps. Repeating the same move again and again, he cleaned the area of all zombies before popping some more chocolate into his mouth and setting off towards the rest of the forest to comb it for stragglers. With the 30% damage boost that his title gave him, he was unstoppable.

Soon, the entire area was cleared of zombies and Harry set off towards the clearing near the Black lake to kill his first legion zombie, which was level 34.

Knowing he could easily kill it, Harry set a challenge for himself. He decided not to use any wandless or wand magic this time, but only his bow. He really needed to level up his Archery skill to a higher accuracy and he really wanted to try out some types of trick arrows he'd thought of in his spare time.

Pulling out Gandiva, he watched from the top of a nearby tree as the Legion Zombie formed and stood to its full height. Steadying his breath, he took careful aim. This accuracy of his first shot would be essential for the rest of the fight.

Steadying his breath, he let go of the bowstring. The fire arrow flew through the air like a deadly missile and lodged itself into its target…the Achilles tendon of the Legion.

The giant monster stumbled, and proving true the age-old expression 'the bigger they are the harder they fall', fell like a diva wearing a high heel, right onto its face.

 **Critical Strike! Fire Arrow- {100+(10x10) +10%(200) +30%(200) +100%(280)} x 300% = 1680 Attack!**

Throwing an Observe at the health of the legion zombie that was struggling to get back onto its feet, Harry quickly used his speed to jump across the trees and onto another one with a better vantage point.

 **HP: 13520/15200**

Harry had worked out soon after the last battle that the legion zombie's speed was its biggest weakness, so if he could make him even slower, he'd be able to rapidly attack it at its weak points and take its HP down to zero.

Reaching the required spot on a taller tree, Harry aimed another fire arrow at the other Achilles tendon of the Legion and sent it back into the ground.

 **Critical Strike! Fire Arrow- 560 x 300% = 1680 Attack!**

And from then it was child's play. Harry came closer to the zombie, using his speed to dodge the flailing arms, and started shooting fire arrows at the weak spots in the legion's body.

One arrow to each of his armpits, removing the risks of the arms hitting him at any point.

 **Critical Strike! Fire Arrow- 2x (560 x 300%) = 3360 Attack!**

And five arrows point blank into its neck.

 **Critical Strike! Fire Arrow- 5x (560 x 300%) = 8400 Attack!**

Taking another look at the remaining HP of the legion, which was only at 80. He decided to end it with a final move from his skillset.

 **Iron Fist, Lv-1 (40%)**

 **A single, hard as all heck, punch with a 100% accuracy. Remomancy may be used to enhance the punch.**

 **Special moves:**

 **Pyro Fist - A flaming fist of fury to destroy opponents. 50% chance giving Burn status to enemy.**

 **Cost-30MP**

 **Geo Fist - Earth covers your hand, causing damage to be devastating to the opponent.**

 **Cost-50MP**

Choosing Pyro Fist, he yelled as he drove his flaming fist into the head of the legion and turned it into dust.

THUMP!

THUMP!

Harry looked behind him, only to that another legion zombie had formed in the black lake clearing as soon as the first one had fallen, and was advancing to where Harry stood covered in the golden dust that was all that remained of its fellow legion.

Deciding that it was time to test out that concept arrow he had in mind, he notched an arrow.

He focused a high density of dry air around the tip and used a thin spherical covering of earth to enclose the dense pressurized air around the tip completely, making the arrow look like it had a ball at its tip. Then he lit it the ball on fire and let the arrow fly.

Hopefully, if the skill accepted it as a new type of special arrow, the bow's arrow spawning powers would take care of doing all the work of making such a complex arrow for him.

The new arrow hit the legion zombie right in the face, shattering the earth film and allowing the fire to come in contact with the high amounts of oxygen.

BOOM!

The resulting explosion took out half of the new legion's face.

 **Critical Strike! Explosive Arrow- 680 x 300%= 2040 Attack!**

Ping!

 **New Arrow created: Explosive Arrows - Arrows made with a delicate combination of finely controlled elements. They explode upon contact with target.**

 **60% Damage**

Seeing that his mana was almost fully depleted, Harry popped another chocolate into his mouth and chewed on it while running as fast as he could and snapping off arrow after explosive arrow at the giant zombie.

It wasn't so much the explosions as the sheer force that the bow snapped off arrows with that was doing the real damage. There were thin holes all around the giant zombie's body and occasionally, a critical strike window would pop up.

Harry ignored it all, focusing only on destroying the Legion.

With a final explosive arrow to the face that made another critical strike window pop up, Harry finally destroyed the legion zombie.

Ping!

 **You have gained a total of 21,958 Exp!**

Ping!

 **You leveled up!**

 **Harry Potter**

 **Health-600/600**

 **Mana-350/350**

 **The Gamer**

 **Title-The Boy who Lived**

 **Level-11 Exp-77773/153600**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **STR-14**

 **VIT-20(+4)=24**

 **DEX-19(+4)=23**

 **INT-34**

 **WIS-37**

 **LUC-24**

 **POINTS-5**

 **MONEY- 2025 / 1997G 188S 56K**

 **Harry Potter is a wizard, the son of Lily Potter and James Potter. He is a new fledgling wizard at Hogwarts. He likes hanging with his new friends and divides his time between figuring out insanely complicated political manipulations and honing his unusual magical skills as the Gamer in secret. Harry loves his parents, and wants to help the world they died protecting.**

 **Status- wizard, giving Harry +4 VIT, +4 DEX and the ability to control magic, talk to snakes, control his appearance and look cool.**

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up!**

 **Archery, Lv-12 (40%)**

 **You can shoot an arrow, it may or may not hit its target.**

 **Accuracy- 12%**

 **Special magic arrows:**

 **Fire Arrows - Its arrows with their heads on fire. What do you want me to describe about that?**

 **+10% Damage**

 **Explosive Arrows - Arrows made with a delicate combination of finely controlled elements. They explode upon contact with target.**

 **60% Damage**

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up thrice due to excessive use!**

 **Critical strike! Lv-4 (60%)**

 **A precise strike that can cause 450% damage to the target.**

 **Chance of success- Luc+Dex**

Harry noted that the game had given him a new description. Looking around him, he happily realized that his higher luck stats got him much better loot!

Activating his Unicorn Boost, Harry took off, picking up all the loot that had been dropped.

 **5,000£**

 **80 G**

 **8 x Wiggenwald potions(Low)**

 **3 x Dr. Ubbly's Oblivious Unction(Mental healing potion)**

 **2 x Maximum Turbo Farts potion**

 **Healing shrubs**

 **20 ropes**

 **12 spears**

 **All Access Pass to a Michael Jackson concert**

Harry sighed at the expired date on the concert ticket. Apparently, his luck wasn't all _that_ good yet.

Running back to where he had begun training, Harry exited out of the ID into the moonlit night and called for Hedwig, who flamed onto his shoulder and nipped at Harry's ears in concern before dropping into his pocket. Harry had put some small shrunk cushions into the pocket to allow Hedwig a more comfortable time and the phoenix often just slept in the pocket while Harry went about his day.

They headed towards the castle under Harry's invisibility cloak, slipping around Mrs. Norris and moving towards the courtyard from where he could take the stairs up to the tower, when suddenly he heard an owl shriek out a loud hoot of pain.

Hedwig grew restless in his pocket.

"Quiet ye little pipsqueaks!" came Filch's voice. "You'll have your letters and be on yer way soon!"

Filch came around the corner and to Harry's shock, he had a massive cage full of post owls, all of whom had letters tied to their legs.

Wondering what was going on, Harry quietly followed him under his cloak.

To more of Harry's shock, Filch made a beeline to Quirrell's office, opening the door and going in.

Harry listened carefully from the outside. Dumbledore had implied that he could see through his cloak when they'd talked about the Mirror of Erised. He didn't want to take any such risk with Quirrell.

There was a loud thunk and indignant hoots that signified that Filch had placed the cage down.

"Are you sure you want to take tonight's batch as well Professor?" Filch said, his tone more polite than Harry had ever heard. Was Filch an accomplice of Quirrell's? Was that how he'd gotten hold of his letter to the DMLE?

"It's always a p-pleasure to h-help out our d-diligent caretaker Mr. F-Filch" came Quirrell's stuttering reply.

"Of course sir. Thank you sir," said Filch backing out of the room and closing the door, before walking away in the opposite direction.

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Find out how and why Quirrell got hold of your letter and what was Filch doing.**

 **Rewards,**

 **10,000 exp**

 **+5 stat disc**

 **Failure,**

 **Death**

 **Potential destruction of the wizarding world.**

 **YES/NO?**

He pressed yes to accept the quest. There was something really fishy going on, and it was related to how Quirrell got his hands on his letter. Harry needed to find out what.

The next night saw Harry in the library looking through the books in the Restricted Section for one single spell. He'd heard the incantation before, and he'd seen it performed before, but he hadn't ever learned it. Finding the right book, he memorized the instructions and started practicing the wand motions and pronunciation until the notification came.

Ping!

 **Spell learned!**

 **Obliviate/Obliviatus Obscura Revealus**

 **This spell is used to erase the memory of the subject. If the user has a mind arts level of 5 or above, he can rewrite a fake memory above that erased memory. Counter Obliviatus Obscura Revealus can remove the obliviation by causing an extreme amount of pain to the subject.**

 **-80 MP per use**

Harry raised his eyebrows. The book had said that there was no counter to the memory charm. The fact that the game showed a counter to the spell, meant that someone somewhere had developed a counter and withheld it from the public. Or perhaps it was lost in time?

Either way, Harry wasn't too keen on learning this, but he felt that he had no choice.

He'd often thought of just going to Dumbledore and telling him everything. But one fact always stopped him. Harry knew no more than Snape did and Snape almost caught Quirrell trying to steal the stone! He obviously told that to Dumbledore and the headmaster still didn't believe him. Quirrell could argue that some falcon had probably killed the post-owl and he had just found the letter lying on the ground somewhere and Dumbledore would easily believe Quirrell over Harry.

It was becoming almost depressing how little he could trust the people in power.

The green-eyed boy shook his head. Now was not the time for such thoughts. He had a quest to complete. Pulling out his wolf skin jacket and activating his bloodlust skill, Harry prepared to use some serious interrogation tactics on the caretaker.

Dropping into an ID and running down to the third floor, where Harry knew Filch was going to be and dropped out of the ID. Seeing Filch just a few feet away, he stuffed his Invisibility Cloak into his inventory and ran at him at a human speed, tackling him into the ground and whispered "ID Create: Zombies". They were both pulled into the ID.

Before Filch could say anything at all, Harry knocked him out with a blow to the head, placed a hand at the back of his neck to avoid whiplash and used Unicorn Boost to whisk both of them to the patch of land in front of Hagrid's hut, just in front of the zombie filled forest.

There, he erected a massive wall of fire that would both attract the zombies and prevent them from coming too close. He pulled up a pillar of earth using Geomancy and tied Filch to it using the rope he'd got as loot.

Then, he let the wall of fire part for just a second, allowing only one zombie to come through. He let it come close before trapping it in place by making the earth rise up and restrain it.

Ping!

 **A new skill has been created!**

 **Theatrics, Lv- 1 (30%)**

 **You have a penchant for the grand, a wish to bedazzle and the desire to intimidate. This skill helps you achieve it.**

Harry absently waved it away before he tipped a Wiggenwald Potion into Filch's mouth, causing him to wake up. With his wolf cloak hiding his identity and giving his voice the undertone of a growling werewolf, Harry with his bloodlust had quite a terrifying voice at his disposal.

Filch's eyes fluttered open, catching sight of the zombie that was groaning and struggling right in front of him and a massive wall of fire just a few feet away from them.

He whimpered, unable to look away from the zombie's rotting face.

Harry took the chance and started talking from his spot behind him, **"Answer my questions, or that zombie eats you for dinner. Why were you collecting all the student owls?"**

"I-I c-can't tell you that. That's sch-school business." Filch said, stuttering worse than Quirrell. Apparently, there was some courage left in him.

" **WHY!"** Harry asked again forcefully, this time releasing the zombie from its earthen bindings. It started to limp closer towards Filch, who struggled against his ropes.

"Make it stop! Make it stop! I'll tell you! Professor Dumbledore! Professor Dumbledore! It was the Headmaster!"

Harry flicked a finger, binding the zombie to place. **"What did he tell you to do?"**

"He ordered me to catch all the owls carrying letters out of the school and deliver it to whichever teacher's turn it was that day to go through their letters."

" **Why"**

"To erase anything about the third-floor corridor. He doesn't want any parents worrying or panicking about whatever he's been guarding in the third-floor corridor."

" **Why did you deliver it to Quirrell two days in a row? Why not to the Professor whose turn it was?"**

"Professor Quirrell agreed to take all the teachers' turns from the start of the year. He says the other teachers had time issues and that he wants to help. That's why I give him the letters. He gets the job done so I don't tell the headmaster about it. That's all I know about the entire thing. I swear now please let me go!"

Harry flicked his hand one more time, freeing the zombie, which started to hobble closer to them slowly.

Filch's breath hitched. "I swear don't know anything else! Just get it away! Get it away! Get it away!"

Harry flicked his hand, burning the zombie to ashes. That sight was too much for the terrified caretaker and he fainted.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Find out how and why Quirrell got hold of your letter and what was Filch doing.**

 **Rewards,**

 **10,000 exp**

 **+5 stat disc**

Harry waved the window away and focused. His senses hadn't picked up any lies. He tried to calm himself, trying to comprehend all that the now unconscious man had told him.

So Dumbledore was trying to stop parents from panicking by modifying their kids' mail. And by doing so, he'd unknowingly handed Quirrell a way to intercept and find out about Harry's letter. The entire situation was just too convoluted. Steeling himself, he pointed his wand at Filch's forehead and incanted the spell he'd learned.

" _Obliviate_ "

* * *

The next day in the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Lucius Malfoy impatiently awaited the arrival of Albus Dumbledore for their meeting.

Just as he was about to give up and leave, the fireplace flared green and the tall bearded wizard stepped out of it. "My sincerest apologies Lucius," he said before pulling back his throne-like chair and taking a seat at the table. "So what is this about?"

"The Stone, Albus," Lucius said, getting directly to the point. "You must move it. The board will lose all credibility if it is found that we've been allowing you to monitor and modify the mail of students. Not even Nicholas Flamel's word will protect any of us from _that_ scandal. And it will only get harder and harder to keep it all a secret from now on. The students that have gone home would surely tell their parents."

"I think you severely overestimate the attention span of youngsters Lucius. You were there when Nicholas stated his wish to use the school to protect the stone. Did he look like he would allow the stone to be moved? Rest assured, secrecy about the stone being here is of utmost importance, both to me and the staff."

"Is that why you practically announced it to the entire school on the first day? Secrecy? Or is it some sort of insidious trick you have?" Lucius spat out.

"I could not let students stumble into the traps set for the protection of the stone. As Headmaster, protection of my children always comes first." Dumbledore replied, his tone a bit severe.

"Then why have you not acted on Severus's concerns Dumbledore? He clearly thinks that this…Quirrell is a threat to the Stone and the students. Merlin knows he's told both of us enough times. He seems pretty sure that the man is after the Stone."

"I assure you, Lucius, that Severus's worries, while appreciated, are unfounded. I'm afraid Severus's desire to teach as the Defence teacher might have colored his assumptions towards the negative. Quirinus has my absolute trust. He has been here as a Professor for over a decade."

"The _Muggle Studies_ Professor," Lucius shot back, his nose upturned.

Dumbledore did not acknowledge his comment. "I understand our personal differences in opinions Lucius, but the board and the school staff _must_ work together to get through this. The attempt at stealing the Stone at Gringotts shows that there is someone or some group powerful enough that wants it. We need to focus on outward threats while keeping our ears open for any word of such a thief. Causing distrust amongst our own people will not benefit anyone."

There was a minute of silence, in which they both sipped their cups of Darjeeling tea. Finally, Lucius broke the silence.

"Doesn't it ever wake you in the middle of the night? The feeling that one day they, whoever they are, will come after the Stone here? And your children?"

"It does indeed."

"What do you do, when you wake up to that?"

Another moment of silence reigned through the office, before Dumbledore replied, "I feel a great swell of pity for the poor soul that comes to my school looking for trouble."

Lucius stared at the old headmaster for a few moments before putting down his cup, picking up his cane and walking out of the office door.

* * *

Lisa Turpin was carrying down a large stack of books she had borrowed from the library up to the Ravenclaw common room. She could barely see above the top of the stack, after all, exams were here and if she did badly then she might get expelled!

The thought of telling her mother, who was working hard just so that she could go to Hogwarts just like her father wanted, that she was expelled was extremely hard for the Ravenclaw girl. That line of thought made her walk even faster, for disappointing her mother was something she wanted to avoid at all costs.

SMASH!

With a loud shriek, she toppled right into the ground, her books falling all around her. Looking up to see what she'd slammed into, she saw a handsome blonde man looking at her with a raised eyebrow. She blushed as she recognized him. It was Lucius Malfoy!

"S-sorry Mister Malfoy," she said in a small voice.

"Quite alright. Quite alright Miss . . ."

"T-Turpin. Sir. Lisa Turpin."

"Ah," The man seemed to recognize her name, "Have no worries Miss Turpin. I'm sure your mother would be proud to see you working so hard," he said, bending down to pick up some of her books before handing them to her.

"T-Th-Thank you, sir. Good-day" Lisa stammered out.

"And to you as well," he said with a small nod and walked off briskly.

Lisa shook her head. Lucius Malfoy! Of all the people she could have smacked right into!

'Thank goodness he didn't get angry.' Lisa thought, knowing that the powerful man could easily get her mum into a lot of trouble if he wanted to. Turning around, balancing the stack of books to allow her some sight towards where she was going this time, she started walking towards the tower again.

Nestled between her Charms and Herbology texts, was a thin black diary.

* * *

 **For the purpose of this story, Hogwarts tuition is NOT free. I realize that** **Rowling tweeted that it was, but I planned this story before that and there are some plot points that require this change to canon. Call it artistic license or AU change.**

 **Anyone catch that X-Men easter egg?**


	16. Book-I:A Tale of Two Toms

Chapter 15:

Harry was having a tough time keeping himself going.

The students were back from the holidays, teachers had started pushing the students real hard to prepare for the exams, and despite his near-impeccable scores in every class, he was no exception from that. If anything, they pushed him even harder than most others.

Flitwick, much to Harry's relief, had one day called him over and said with a smile, "The teachers push you because you're one of the strongest students this school has ever seen Mr. Potter. That being said, don't stress yourself too much. Just do your best. Your best is more than enough."

Harry had come to the conclusion soon after Quirrell had given his threat that bringing Hermione into the loop about the stone was a really bad decision. Not wanting to risk her life in any way, Harry decided that while he'd continue to keep an eye on the stone, he needed to get her out of this mess.

Which was why he was near the common room fire, sitting right across Hermione, who was eyeing at him with a curious look.

"So? What did you want to talk about? Did anything happen with the stone? With Quirrell?" she asked in a hushed tone.

"Yes" he'd rehearsed the lie a dozen times, and yet when it had come down to the moment of telling it, Harry wasn't feeling all that confident. Despite that, he shouldered on. "I sent a letter to the head of DMLE about it."

Her eyes widened. "Did you get any replies? Did anything happen?"

"Yeah," Harry said, pulling out the letter he'd faked out of his pocket and handed it to Hermione. His high Calligraphy skill and the welcome note he'd received from Amelia Bones back in the beginning of the year made it easy to write up a small fake reply. "She told us not to interfere anymore and that she'd handle it."

 **Lie Successful!**

Harry felt horrible.

Hermione bounced in her seat with a happy smile. "Harry! That's great! We won't have to worry about the stone anymore! We can let the authorities handle it and just focus on our exams."

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up!**

 **Lying, Lv- 6 (40%)**

 **This is your ability to lie to people, the higher the level the better the lie and less chance of discovery!**

 **30% chance of success, less based on how extreme the lie is.**

Unfortunately, Harry thought in his head, it wasn't as simple as that. He'd looked up the school rulebook and cross-referenced it with Hogwarts a History, finding out that unless an actual criminal act was committed at the school, the handling of the case would fall into the hands of the headmaster.

He was caught in a legal deadzone and the only person who was stuck with him in this legal deadzone was a greasy headed manipulative man who Harry decidedly didn't trust.

In short, he was alone.

He pulled himself out of his thoughts and looked at Hermione, who'd pulled out a ruler and a piece of paper and had started planning out study times and library research schedules. If only he could afford to trust authorities as much as his bushy-haired friend did.

"…and with two more hours in the weekends at the library, we should easily have the entire course revised three times by the time the exam starts next month!"

"Sounds good Hermione," said Harry with a smile.

Suddenly, Terry's loud voice rang from behind them. "Hey Harry! Professor Flitwick's asking for you at the common room door!"

"Coming!" Harry yelled back before turning to Hermione. "I'll see you later alright?"

Hermione nodded and Harry walked over to the entrance of the common room and slipped out. Closing the door behind him, he turned to look at the tiny professor.

"Good morning Professor," He said with a smile, "How can I help you?"

"Yes yes Mr. Potter, good morning, good morning. Come along now. I'll explain what is going on along the way," Flitwick said before striding off down the Ravenclaw tower.

Harry jogged after him, curious about why he had been called by the professor who usually never bothered climbing the stairs up to the tower.

As they walked in the general direction of his office, Flitwick explained what was going on. "It's a bit of a delicate matter Mr. Potter, as Ministry matters often are," he said, "Nymphadora Tonks. That's the name of the trainee Auror who's going to be asking you some questions about what happened back in Halloween."

"Nymphadora Tonks is here?" Harry blurted out.

Flitwick raised an eyebrow. "You knew about her coming?"

"The minister was here to talk about my guardianship issues, and he mentioned that someone would be coming to take some statements…but that was months ago. Why would she be coming so late?" Harry said thinking back to how he'd seen the pink haired auror while getting the Dragon egg out of Hogwarts. She'd seen him in disguise, which was probably why she hadn't stayed that day.

"Ah well. Such is the efficiency of our Ministry," Flitwick said with a small grin. Harry smiled back.

"Is there anything I should know before I go in, Professor?" he asked.

"Do avoid telling her about you wanting to fight the troll yourself…might raise some red flags. Besides that, just be honest," Flitwick said while opening the door of his office to let Harry in. "And don't answer any questions other than those related to the incident. Nymphadora isn't the type of girl to do it, but I've known Aurors that slip information to the tabloids for an extra bit of gold. Let's avoid that."

With a nod and a smile, Harry stepped into the office and let Flitwick close the door from the outside.

Inside, sitting on a chair with a small desk beside her, on which a quill and a notepad lay, was the faintly familiar faced pink haired Auror. She looked up immediately upon hearing the door close.

"Wotcher Mr. Potter! I'm Tonks. Just Tonks mind you. Great to meet you." she said, shaking Harry's hand and gesturing for him to sit down on the unoccupied chair. "Sit sit. Just a minute and we can get all this finished up."

"Harry please. Pleasure's all mine." Harry looked curiously at the notepad she was holding as he spoke. "I'd be glad to put that troll stuff behind me."

Tonks jotted down a few things in the notepad before setting it back on the table, pulling out a wand and waving it at the quill, which sprung to life and jumped onto the notepad, ready to jot anything down at command. Harry Observed her in the meantime.

 **Nymphadora Tonks**

 **Lv-19**

 **HP-8000/8000**

 **MP-2650/2650**

 **Race-Witch**

 **Str-14**

 **Vit-19**

 **Dex-9**

 **Int-29**

 **Wis-19**

 **Luc-10**

 **Nymphadora Tonks is a Trainee Auror and the daughter of Ted and Andromeda Tonks. Despite being a survivor of traumatic past events, she doesn't let that define her and tries to stay cheery and make the best of what she has. She is a metamorphmagus and can alter her appearance at will. She likes cute animals and hates her first name.**

 **She doesn't know Harry but is glad he isn't a stuck up twit. She is feeling slightly bored at the moment.**

Harry, having gained some serious respect for her, waved it away and focused on the bright pink haired girl.

"We've gotta talk all official for the dicta quill. Can you do that Harry?" Tonks asked. Harry nodded an affirmative.

"Interrogator, Trainee Auror Nymphadora Tonks. Subject, Harry James Potter. Witness. Case in consideration, Magical Creature, more specifically the presence of a _Troglodytarum montus_ , in highly protected area, more specifically the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, on the 31st of October 1991. Mr. Potter do you acknowledge the stated facts as true and complete, to the best of your knowledge?" she said in a flat tone as the quill sprung into action and started jotting down whatever was being said.

"I do," Harry said. Tonks shot him a thumbs and with a grin before continuing in a professional voice.

"Would you concisely describe the events of what happened in the evening of thirty first of October 1991?"

"Due to the day of my parents' passing being on that day, I was in a bit of a sour mood. I had left the feast earlier than most and was making my way up to the Ravenclaw Tower when suddenly I saw the troll. I tried to run but was boxed in inside the girl's bathroom in the second floor. Due to the timely intervention of my friends who'd come after me to warn me of the troll, I was saved."

"Could you please, for the record, state all the spells you remember being used in the entire situation?"

"Well…there was a Spongifying spell and its counter, one levitating spell and one red sparks spell."

"Could you please describe the manner in which they were used?"

"It was I who shot the red sparks spell at the eyes of the troll to distract it. A _Spongify_ to soften its club, also by me. Counter to that spell by me and Levitating spell by my friend Ronald Weasley to knock the troll out using its own club."

"And finally, do you suspect any foul play involved?"

For a moment, every fiber in Harry's being was screaming at him to say yes. But he forced it down. If any word of this reached Quirrell, his friends would be put at risk, and that he wasn't willing to do.

Tonks was peering worriedly at Harry for taking long on this to answer. Reassuring her with a smile, he answered, "No."

"That concludes the statement by Witness Harry James Potter. This statement was taken by a Ministry standard dictaquill with _Autospell_ and _Kwikwrit_ charms on it, as per regulation." Tonks finally said before waving her wand again. The quill stopped writing and fell down lifeless again.

"And that's done! You won't believe how hard those are to do in auror tests! And I did it in field the first time and it all goes perfect! Amazing!" she exclaimed and happily put the notepad and quill back.

Suddenly, Harry remembered something. There was a changing his appearance part in his bio! And who better to ask than a metamorphmagus! Not wanting to upset her anyhow, he asked Tonks carefully, "Is it actually true that you're a metamorphmagus?"

Contrary to his expectation, the girl perked up with a grin. "You've heard of that! Wanna see?"

Harry nodded.

Suddenly her lips changed color and somehow morphed into a duck's bill. Looking like a peculiarly disturbed bird who'd seen its mum and dad go at it, she looked Harry dead in the eyes.

"QUACK!"

Harry cracked up laughing.

Changing back to her own face, she morphed her nose into a pig's snout that seemed to twitch every time it smelled something. And then she turned her face to look just like Harry, but with elephant ears!

"Oh goodness," Harry wheezed out between bouts of laughter, "Can't…breathe…stop."

Tonks morphed back, and with a grin, waited for Harry to pull himself back together.

"My turn now. Did you really fight a dragon, like those stories say?"

"No…why would you even think that? I'm eleven!" Harry said, amused.

"Right, of course. Why would I think that? You're eleven. That's stupid." She muttered before trying to discreetly scratch something out of the notepad.

Feeling a bit mischievous, Harry leaned over and sneaked a peek. What he saw almost made him cry with laughter.

"Wait a minute. Did I just see what I think I saw? You, Miss Tonks, a magical law enforcer in training, wrote down that I, first year Harry Potter, took down a full grown mountain troll with my ... _Dragonbuster_ powers," Harry got that much out before breaking down in laughter again.

"It was a theory," she muttered, snapping the notepad shut. Her hair turned a bright red.

"All right all right," Harry conceded with a chuckle before steering the conversation towards its original goal, "So how did you realize that you were one? Did somebody teach you?"

"Metamorph? Oh no! Mum says I was born with brown hair and turned my hair yellow after seeing the blonde nurse. Scared the living hell out of everyone. I don't think they can be taught. You have to be born one, so they're pretty rare."

"So there's no way to be taught?" Harry said, disappointed.

"No. Sorry." she said.

Seeing his dejected expression, Tonks spoke up, "But I think I know something you'll find pretty cool." Harry looked up, curious, "After you get over all the traumatizing fear mongering McGonagall does in the first few years, you'll start doing human transfiguration. Some people get so good at it that they can pretty much wandlessly change themselves fluidly, to a certain degree. They can almost mimic the power of Metamorphs. With enough practice…maybe you could pull it off."

"Yeah," Harry said, giving her a smile and cheering up. Tonks couldn't test if he was a Metamorph or not and the game hadn't been wrong yet. So holding out hope on the Metamorph thing and keeping this mastery of transfiguration as a back-up plan, he decided to let it go for now.

 **For believing in the game, take +1 Wis!**

'Sure!' Harry thought as he perked up again.

Tonks's eyes suddenly widened, before she jumped up and started stuffing everything into her bag.

"Why the hurry? Anything happened?" Harry asked.

"The Quidditch finals! They're today! I haven't watched a game in forever. I want to get there in time! We've been here for too long! Come on! Let's go! I'm cheering for Hufflepuff." Tonks said.

"I think I'll pass. I don't watch Quidditch."

Tonks face showed surprise and her hair turned a shocking white. "You haven't watched Quidditch? Ever?"

"No..."

"That's it, we're watching the finals together." She resolutely decided. "I get to take your Quidditch virginity. Come on now. You'll enjoy it."

"But I don't want to!" Harry insisted.

"I could just place you under arrest and take you there by force," Tonks said, her voice a mock serious.

Harry's eyes narrowed. "You wouldn't dare."

"Wanna bet on that?" Her wand tip started glowing an ominous red.

" ...Fine. But I'm not sitting in that stadium for three days."

Together, they headed off towards the Quidditch pitch, where the finals between Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw was taking place.

When they got there, Tonks and Harry sat themselves down in the guest seats. The sight of the entire school full of people cheering on for their favorite teams with crackers, banners, fireworks and just loud yelling was pretty darn impressive. Harry would give Quidditch that much to, however strange it was, it sure had a devoted following.

It was a few minutes after they took their seats that the teams lined up. Madam Hooch yelled out that she wanted a fair match, the captains tried to crush each other's hands and then suddenly, they were on their brooms and rising up in the air.

The snitch was released, two bludgers were set free and the quaffle was thrown, beginning the game.

The Quaffle was flying from one end of the pitch to the other at breakneck speeds and the bludgers were busy trying to bludgeon people to death. Tonks was going mad hollering and cheering for the Hufflepuff team.

But Harry wasn't watching them. No. He had only had eyes for the snitch. The moment it had been released, Harry's brain had gone 'Oooh shiny!' and started focusing the entire Gamer's Mind on tracking the golden snitch.

The moment it had been released, it had fluttered in front of the players for a second before blurring out of their vision and disappearing from their eyes.

But not from Harry's. He tracked it as it whizzed straight down into the grass and stayed stationary at one spot while the seekers flew around like headless chickens looking skywards. It was after ten minutes and three goals that the snitch moved, this time to flutter right above the guest seats. In fact, it seemed to have taken a distinct liking to Tonks's flashy neon hair.

No, Harry told himself, he shouldn't. He definitely shouldn't.

The snitch floated just a bit closer.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Screw up the entire Quidditch Match!**

 **Rewards,**

 **1000 exp**

 **Failure,**

 **Um . . . Nothing really. Probably a detention?**

 **YES/NO?**

'Screw it' Harry thought as he pressed yes, pulled his robe over his hand to avoid getting caught, snatched the snitch out of the air and stuffed it into his pocket.

He could feel Hedwig playing around with the Snitch in the pocket.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Screw up the entire Quidditch Match!**

 **Rewards,**

 **1000 exp**

Tonks looked at Harry with a wide grin. "Isn't this fun?"

"Yeah. Sure is," Harry said with a goofy grin.

If there _were_ no snitch to be found, they'd eventually have to end the match based on a fair score after a limited time, Harry thought. How long could they possibly stretch it?

* * *

As it turned out, quite long. Tonks had to leave at the end of the first day due to work, but ordered Harry to mail her the results. It was just the beginning.

The match lasted for five full days, with teams recruiting from their houses for a reserve team that would take their places at night.

Food was served to the players on their brooms, a lot of the people watching the match brought over their books to study for the exams and the Gryffindor Quidditch team made a killing by setting up booths and giving butt massages to players who spent half days sitting on a stick.

When on the fifth day, Harry finally felt pity enough to let the snitch get out of his pocket and let go of his 'put a timer on Quidditch' campaign, the Ravenclaw seeker just grabbed it out of mid-air and the entire crowd, regardless of house, burst out in relieved applause.

It took the school weeks to put the mess behind it and much to Hermione's horror, they'd only managed to revise the entire course twice instead of thrice.

Which was why Harry, Terry and Ron found themselves sitting at the Ravenclaw table, reassuring a hyperventilating Hermione on the morning of the exams.

"But so much of it is practical! I haven't even practiced the mouse to snuff box transfiguration yet! And what if they ask us to cast a _Sonorus_ charm! I don't know how I'd do that! What do I do what do I do what do I do!"

"You'll be fine Hermione. Calm down. You've got to be the smartest witch in the school." said Ron with his mouth half stuffed with mashed potatoes.

"Yeah. The only person close to you is Harry and not even he can beat you at the theory. You'll do great!" Terry chimed in.

"But! But! Wha-" Hermione's brain was short circuiting. Noticing that, Harry quickly pulled up Hermione's window.

 **Hermione Granger Lv-7 (Status: Panic Attack -70% to Int and Wis)**

 **HP:350/350**

 **MP:200/200**

He poured his mana into her and activated his healing ability.

Ping!

 **Do you wish to heal - Status: Panic Attack -70% to Int and Wis**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry pressed yes. Looking Hermione dead in the eyes, he said, "It'll be fine Hermione. Relax. Let's just go and do our best alright. Stop worrying about all that will come after."

"You're right." Hermione said, noticeably calmer. "You're right. Let's go."

And they went up to the seventh floor, where the theory exams were set up for all the first years in a giant hall like classroom.

It was sweltering hot in there and the no wands in the room rule meant that the teachers couldn't cast cooling charms to help out. Harry would use his Aeromancy skill once in a while to send a small breeze of cool wind through the classroom, eliciting many sighs of relief from the first year students.

After they'd finished with most of the theory papers that day, the next day involved all of the practical exams.

Professor Flitwick called them one by one into his class to see if they could make a pineapple tap-dance across a desk. He delightfully clapped when Harry's pineapple performed a pirouette and neatly bowed to him.

After displaying a few more basic charms like the _Incendio_ and the red sparks spell _Periculum_ , Harry was told to go to the Transfigurations practical, where Professor McGonagall watched him turn a mouse into a snuffbox. Points were given for how pretty the snuffbox was, so Harry transfigured up a silvery snuffbox with the engraved depiction of Illyus the Brave casting his mouse patronus. McGonagall inspected it for whiskers and ran her fingers along the engraving before giving Harry a small smile and an approving nod that uplifted Harry's spirits a little.

And those uplifted spirits were necessary, for Snape's attempts at making them all nervous by breathing down their necks while they tried to remember how to make a Forgetfulness potion were a bit too effective for Harry's taste.

But it wasn't all gloom and doom. Harry was incredibly amused when Ernie Macmillan presented an empty cauldron to Professor Snape, insisting that he must have drunk the Forgetfulness potion he made since he didn't remember making it.

Their very last exam was History of Magic. One hour of answering questions about batty old wizards who'd invented self-stirring cauldrons and they were free, free for a whole wonderful week until their exam results came out. When the ghost of Professor Binns told them to put down their quills and roll up their parchment, Harry couldn't help but cheer with the rest.

"That was far easier than I thought it would be," said Hermione as they joined the crowds flocking out onto the sunny grounds. "I needn't have learned about the 1637 Werewolf Code of Conduct or the uprising of Elfric the Eager."

"I told you so." Ron and Terry said at the same time before giving each other a fist bump. Then they both got promptly smacked in the head by the vengeful girl.

Harry shook his head at the antics of his friends with a grin. His mind wandered a bit towards the subject of the stone.

Harry's earpiece hadn't activated for weeks now. Apparently, making an attempt on the stone while Dumbledore was present wasn't on Quirrell's to-do list anymore.

The headmaster's reputation as the only man Voldemort was ever afraid of must be truer than he'd suspected, because it looked as if so long as Dumbledore was present in the school, sitting in his office in the third floor right across the prohibited corridor, the Stone was safe from both Voldemort and Quirrell.

That thought brought a smile to his face.

Glancing at a tree they were passing, he frowned as he caught sight of Lisa Turpin all alone, writing something in her notebook. The memory of what Susan had said at the ball came back to him. Shaking his head, he decided to talk to her another day and joined his friends on their way to the black lake.

* * *

A flutter of curiosity echoed through the consciousness of the diary, then a small burst of hesitation. The living consciousness that resided in it aroused, wondering what woke him from his sleep.

A drop of ink fell onto his pages.

He absorbed it and latched on to the flutter of curiosity with a little bit of magic, giving a small tug. The curiosity grew tenfold. He felt a quill scratch his page.

 _My name is Lisa Turpin._

He started analyzing the handwriting.

A horizontal slant of thirty degrees written with a slightly shaky hand, indicated to him an innate nervousness and a distinct lack of adventure spirit while the little to no force on the paper with quill and the calligraphic handwriting indicated wizarding upbringing.

Not taking too much time, he willed the page to write back using the same ink that had been written on it.

 _Hello, Lisa Turpin. My name is Tom Riddle. How did you come by my diary?_

And he waited for the reply, he keeping a vigilant watch on the emotions of the girl who was writing in his pages, using subtle compulsions to increase curiosity and inquisitiveness and eliminating hesitation and doubt. The reply came.

 _I found you in my school bag the day before my first-year exams, I don't remember ever picking you up though._

He felt a bit of curiosity as to why his Prime soul piece would leave his first soul container lying around for a little girl would find. Shelving that for later consideration, he wrote back a reply.

 _It's alright. Finders keepers is the rule that applies here, doesn't it Lisa? Would you be a dear and tell me what year is it?_

 _Its 1992 Tom. I joined Hogwarts in 1991,_ she wrote.

It had been almost fifty years since his creation, he marveled. So much he must have missed. He'd have to get out and find his Prime soul piece.

 _So tell me about yourself Lisa._

A brief hesitation. _About myself?_

 _Yes. I am a diary after all. It is what I am made to do._

Curiosity and hesitation battled in the writer, but with his compulsions pushing her to write and believe in the diary, she didn't even consider not writing back.

 _But what are you Tom? How can you be a diary and write back?'_

' _I'm special Lisa. I'm a memory that was preserved. Preserved in more lasting ways than ink. You could equate me with a painting.'_

With that the last traces of hesitation faded away; she told him of herself, her mother, how she'd read stories about Harry Potter and his exploits, and how she got to go to school with him now.

Whilst pretending to be sympathetic, he started using this new found knowledge to craft the beginnings of his plan.

He felt a small tear fall onto the diary as the little girl finished telling Tom all about her family's hardships.

 _Thank you for letting me tell you all this Tom. I just miss home so much and I'm so alone here. I haven't ever had a chance to tell somebody about all this._

With a small metaphysical smirk, he decided that he'd delay possessing the girl until he was out of the school and away from Dumbledore. Meanwhile, he'd solidify his presence in her life and slowly siphon magic from her. Her young magical core would be _ideal_ for this.

With that thought in mind, he wrote her a reply.

' _Don't you worry Lisa. You have me now to be your friend, you can tell me anything. Don't you worry.'_

* * *

Harry's receiver earpiece hadn't activated in months. He had taken to wearing it day in and day out, so much so that he never actually took it out, always keeping an ear out for any sounds of the door opening in the third-floor corridor.

Nothing came.

Which was one of the reasons why, with the exams over, Harry had for once dropped his constant vigilance and gone to sleep, intending to not wake up until late in the morning the next day.

To his surprise, his eyes opened at a bit after midnight, when something started buzzing repeatedly in his ears.

Eyes wide open and alert, he swiftly pulled the bed curtains close and silenced them, before pulling out his wand. " _Sonorus_ " he cast at the receiver, and desperately listened to whatever had activated his Spy Bug.

There was the signature tap of boots that echoed through the receiver whenever somebody came towards the third floor corridor. Then a voice came.

" _We're here."_

It was Quirrell! And there wasn't a single ounce of stutter in his voice.

That surely meant that whoever he was speaking to must be his accomplice, someone who knew about his fake persona. With that thought, Harry listened even more carefully. This accomplice was someone who he'd have to be wary of.

But what came through wasn't a voice. It was a sibilant hiss, one that sent chills down Harry's spine. _"Are we ready to test the half giant's words?"_

" _We are. Will a harp do?"_ Quirrell replied, his tone polite.

" _It will"_ The hiss replied.

'Whoever is talking must be disguising his voice' Harry thought, 'There is no way that's someone's real voice.'

The tunes of a harp floated through the receiver, pulling Harry out of his musings. With a start Harry realized that they were testing whether Hagrid's information about Fluffy was correct or not. They weren't stealing the stone today. Some part of him relaxed slightly as he heard the snores of the three-headed dog. The stone was safe. Dumbledore's presence must have stopped them from trying.

" _It's true. The beast is vulnerable to music. All we have left to do is find out what Severus has done. Are you sure you don't want to reveal yourself to him my Lord?"_

Harry froze. 'My Lord…' The man Quirrell was talking to wasn't his accomplice. It was his master! It was the Dark Lord!

" _His loyalties are in doubt Quirinus. He could just as well turn me in to curry favor with Dumbledore. No…only you I can trust fully."_

" _It's an honor my Lord."_

" _As it should be,"_ came the haughty reply, _"Did you make sure that no one will...interfere?"_

" _Of course. Dumbledore will be out for his Wizengamot duties for at least an hour. Not enough to get the stone, but enough to keep him unaware of our testing of his traps. The Stone will be yours soon my Lord."_

" _Indeed. You shall gain a place of true honor in my ranks for your contribution."_

" _Thank you my Lord…you are most gracious."_

There was some more shuffling while Harry pondered what he'd just heard. Dumbledore was out, though luckily not for long, so Quirrell couldn't steal the stone tonight. But there was a bigger problem! Voldemort was in the school! How was he going to protect his friends from _him_.

" _Let us leave now my Lord."_ came Quirrell's voice as he shut off the harp and closed the door. There was some rustling sound as Quirrell vanished the harp and got ready to leave. Harry felt curious for a second as to why he was hearing only one set of footsteps.

" _Stop"_ said Voldemort's voice suddenly as Harry was about to shut off the receiver, _"Towards your right Quirinus. On the roof. What is that?"_

Harry froze.

Suddenly all the sounds of movement coming from the receiver stopped. It was all quiet for a moment before Quirrell spoke. " _Accio_."

The earpiece filled with a whooshing sound before suddenly the hissing voice filled Harry's ear. Much louder than before.

" _What is it Quirinus? Tell me"_

" _It appears to be some sort of listening device my Lord…do you think Dumbledore…Could it be his?"_

" _Damn it! I should have expected this!"_ Voldemort said angrily, _"MOVE Quirinus! We do not have much time before Dumbledore arrives! We need to take the stone before he gets here! Not even I can take him on in this form! GO!"_

" _Don't worry, I'll move as fast as I can. Sleep and rest master. Preserve your energy. I will wake you when we get the stone."_

With a sharp crackling sound that indicated that Quirrell had crushed the Spy Bug, the receiver fell silent.

"DAMN IT!" yelled Harry in frustration, waking Hedwig with a start.

Everything he was doing to protect the stone was somehow messing up the whole thing! Just because of his _stupid_ listening device, Quirrell was going after the stone _now_!

But Quirrell told the Dark Lord to sleep, which had to mean that Voldemort was probably not with Quirrell, but somewhere else, supervising the mission! That was good! That was one less massively dangerous wizard he was going to have to fight.

Buoyed be deducing at least a single piece of good news from this entire mess, Harry put on his invisibility cloak and prepared to go off to the third floor corridor to do his best to stop Quirrell from getting his hands on the Stone.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Protect the Philosopher's Stone.**

 **Stop Voldemort and Quirrell,**

 **Don't die,**

 **Rewards,**

 **100,000 exp**

 **?**

 **?**

 **Failure,**

 **You guessed it, death**

 **Destruction of modern wizarding and muggle worlds . . . no pressure**

 **YES/NO?**

With a deep breath to steel himself, Harry accepted the quest. This was his home now, and nobody would be destroying it anytime soon.

With a sudden idea popping into his head, he turned to Hedwig and spoke, "Hey Hedwig, can you get Fawkes to help out?"

The phoenix trilled a mournful negative. Harry felt a sinking feeling in his stomach

"He's gone with Dumbledore isn't he?"

Another trill, this time an affirmative.

"Alright," he said with a deep breath "We need to make sure someone comes after us. We need to get someone to help."

They both spent a few moments thinking before Hedwig let out a sudden tweet

She flew over to the stack of books he had on his bedside table and pushed off a few on the top before picking up a book and flying over to drop it on Harry's lap.

It was a Potions textbook.

"Potions? You want me to tell Snape? We don't have time to go to the dungeons girl, Quirrell must be getting to the stone right now!"

Hedwig let out a noise of frustration. She flew over to his book bag and fished out a piece of parchment before repeatedly pecking the parchment that held the timetable Hermione had made and pointing at the Potions book with her beak.

It was a few seconds before Harry understood what she meant. "You want Hermione to go get Snape?" The phoenix let out a trill of victory.

"Hmm" Harry mused, actually considering the plan, "That's not a bad idea at all. She would be safe with him and if I fail, she'll be far enough in the dungeons to not be harmed."

Fishing out his Invisibility cloak and his wand, Harry grabbed Hedwig's tail feathers. "To the girl's dorms Hedwig." They disappeared in a burst of flames, reappearing right beside what Harry hoped was Hermione's bed.

Hiding Hedwig in his pocket and hoping to all heavens that Hermione didn't have some sort of sleeping naked habit, he parted the curtains on her bed.

She was lying in her jeans and blouse in an uncomfortable position, with stacks of open books all around her. It was a testament to the seriousness of the situation that Harry didn't even break a smile at the snot bubble that was forming in one of her nostrils.

Carefully trying not to scare her, he gently shook her. Her eyes fluttered open before taking a second to focus.

"Harry!" She said in a hushed tone, suddenly wide awake.

Harry put a finger on his mouth and gestured towards the door to the common room. Nodding, Hermione got out of her bed, arranging a few pillows and covering them before tiptoeing out into the common room with Harry.

"What happened Harry?" she asked when they reached the common room "And how'd you even get up into the girls dorm?"

"Jumped the stairs." Harry replied, "Listen Hermione, Quirrell is going after the stone. Now."

"WHAT!?"

"SSSSHH"

"Sorry" Hermione said, dropping her voice to a whisper. "How do you even _know_ that?"

"Listening charm. Listen Hermione there's no time! I need you to go to Snape and tell him that Quirrell has gone after the stone and that I'm going after him. Just get him to tell Dumbledore somehow. He's in the Ministry now but I know Snape can get to him!"

"You're not going after him! No!"

"We don't have time to argue Hermione! If Voldemort gets his hands on the stone then we're done for, another Wizarding World war will break out! I have to delay him!"

Hermione's expression was nothing short of terrified.

"Just get help and we'll both be fine alright?" Harry tried to calm her.

Getting a nod in return, he turned to run out of the common room door, when suddenly Hermione grabbed his hand. "Stay safe Harry," she said, pulling him into a hug before dashing out of the common room towards the dungeons.

Harry let out Hedwig before grabbing on to her tail feathers. Together they flashed to the third floor corridor before Hedwig flapped her wings and alighted on Harry's shoulders.

"You aren't coming Hedwig." Harry said.

Hedwig chirped indignantly.

"No." Harry said, his tone final. Hedwig fell quiet. "I can't risk you getting hurt by Quirrell. You're my best friend. Please Hedwig. No."

With a mournful trill, Hedwig nipped his fingers, giving in.

"Listen carefully" Harry instructed, "Stay in the forest. If you need anything, the centaurs will help you. Eat healthy. Don't just keep on gobbling apples. I'll call for you as soon as I'm out. Got it?"

She trilled a yes, headbutting Harry's cheek before rising into the air and flaming away.

Taking a deep breath, Harry readied himself. "ID Create," he intoned. A window popped up.

 **You cannot enter or exit the ID when in proximity to a supercharged magical nexus. Error Code : PS**

"Error code PS…Philosopher's Stone. Damn it!" Harry let out his mana and took stock of the virtual maelstrom of mana that was the Philosopher Stone's ambient magic. Something with that much power in the wrong hands…Harry let out a shudder.

'It looks like Dumbledore is going to get his wish of hero testing after all,' Harry thought as he opened the door. Immediately, the harp that was playing the music stilled. With a dash of Unicorn Boost enhanced speed, Harry promptly opened the trapdoor and jumped through before Fluffy could wake up.

Cold, damp air rushed past him as he fell. With a muffled thump, he landed on something soft. He sat up and felt around as his eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. His hand brushed against some sort of leaf. He was sitting on a plant.

'Sprout's trap!' Harry realized as he quickly looked around. He was sitting on a Devil's Snare! He quickly let out a massive wave of fire from his hands, burning the entire floor full of plants to a crisp.

Freeing himself from the few remaining tendrils and dusting off the ashes that had gotten on his clothes, Harry activated Unicorn Boost and zipped down the stone passageway.

Halfway through, Harry's ears caught a soft rustling and clinking that seemed to be coming from up ahead.

He reached the end of the passageway and saw the brilliantly lit chamber before him, it's ceiling arching high above. It was full of small, jewel-bright birds, fluttering and tumbling all around the room. On the opposite side of the chamber was a heavy wooden door.

Harry zipped through the room to the other side, bracing himself for the birds to collectively dive for him and attack him.

Nothing happened.

Relieved, he pulled the handle, but the oaken door was locked. ' _Alohamora_ ' Harry intoned. The door didn't budge.

Looking back at the chamber and the glittering birds flying around, Harry realised something. They weren't birds. They were keys.

Harry's left eye developed a twitch. He looked at the door, then at the broom in the corner of the room, then back at the hundreds of keys fluttering around. The twitch was getting progressively worse with every passing second.

"Oh hell no" He muttered, turned back to the door and unleashed a concentrated beam of fire at it. Within a few seconds, a massive burning hole opened up in the oak door and the resulting fire was put out with some water Harry'd pulled from the air around him.

He peered through it into the next room.

It was so dark he could barely see anything. Sending out his Area Sense, he froze in place when he sensed _thirty two_ massive foes filled with mana. Sending a ball of fire into the room through the hole, he briefly illuminated the humongous humanoid figures of pure stone that were on either side of the room.

He was left feeling really glad that he hadn't stepped through the hole into the room. Who knew what those figures would have done if he'd stepped into the room? Maybe even attack him! Not even he could take _all_ of those at once. He would have been torn limb from limb.

Stuffing his Cloak back into his inventory and pulling out Gandiva, he let loose explosive arrow after explosive arrow into the room, not caring too much where they hit.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The explosions ripped through the room as Harry felt the mana dissipate from the stone statues.

He stepped in through the hole. Light suddenly flooded the room.

'Wait a minute' he thought as he took in the destroyed black and white chess pieces and the chess board on the floor.

Was he supposed to _play_ his way across?

"Bugger that," he said to himself as he stepped through the rubble and towards the next door before he pushed it open.

A disgusting smell filled his nostrils, making him pull his robe up over his nose. Eyes watering, he saw, flat on the floor in front of them, a troll, even larger than the one he had taken out back in Halloween, out cold with a bloody lump on its head.

Glad he didn't have to fight this one, Harry pulled open the next door, half expecting a dragon to jump out as the next trap, but there was nothing frightening in here, just a table with seven differently shaped bottles standing on it in a line.

He stepped over the threshold, and immediately a fire sprang up behind him in the doorway. It wasn't ordinary fire either, it was purple. At the same instant, black flames shot up in the doorway leading onward.

Harry shot a jet of water towards the flame from his wand. It evaporated before it even touched the flame. He tried controlling the flames using his powers, but found them uncontrollable.

A little wary, he observed the black flames.

 **Black Hell Fire**

 **Magical flames which can completely destroy most forms of matter. Hell-fire can cause excruciating pain upon contact or instead cause instant death. It's black in color and immune to flame freezing & extinguishing. It can be rendered ineffective by an appropriate antidote.**

And then he turned and observed the purple flames that led back the way he'd come from.

 **Purple Hell Fire**

 **Magical flames which can completely destroy most forms of matter. Hell-fire can cause excruciating pain upon contact or instead cause instant death. It's purple in color and immune to flame freezing & extinguishing. It can be rendered ineffective by an appropriate antidote.**

He was trapped. Finding nothing else to do, he picked up the roll of paper that was lying next to the bottles and read.

 _Danger lies before you, while safety lies behind,_

 _Two of us will help you, which ever you would find,_

 _One among us seven will let you move ahead,_

 _Another will transport the drinker back instead,_

 _Two among our number hold only nettle wine,_

 _Three of us are killers, waiting bidden in line._

 _Choose, unless you wish to stay here forevermore,_

 _To help you in your choice, we give you these clues four:_

 _First, however slyly the poison tries to hide_

 _You will always find some on nettle wine's left side;_

 _Second, different are those who stand at either end,_

 _But if you would move onward, neither is your friend;_

 _Third, as you see clearly, all are different size,_

 _Neither dwarf nor giant holds death in their insides;_

 _Fourth, the second left and the second on the right_

 _Are twins once you taste them, though different at first sight._

A logic trap. A _puzzle_.

For a second, Harry _wished_ he could call this trap a stupid one. But he had a pretty good idea about how most of the wizarding population seemed to lack any ounce of logic or common sense. Keeping that in mind, this trap was actually a fantastic deterrent to anyone who wanted to steal the stone. Unfortunately, it appeared that Quirrell _did_ have some amount of common sense.

Fortunately, so did Harry.

He burnt the clue paper to a crisp. Looking through all the bottles, he dismissed the ones that were full and quickly picked the one that was half empty.

Quirrell had to have used the right potion to go through the hellfire, so the one potion that'd get him through would have to be the one half-used.

It was the smallest one of them all.

He promptly threw the others into the wall, shattering them and making sure that there would be no potion left to let Quirrell get out through the purple fire behind him in case Harry couldn't stop him.

Taking a deep breath, he turned to face the black flames.

"Here I come," he said to the empty room and drained the little bottle in one gulp.

It felt as though ice was flooding his body. He put the bottle down and walked forward bracing himself, he saw the black flames licking his body, but couldn't feel them. For a moment he could see nothing but dark fire. Then he was on the other side, in the last chamber.

* * *

 **Lisa is going to be a pretty central figure in Book 2. Besides, I have other plans for Ginny. Let me know what you thought of the chapter and get ready for the climax of Book 1.**


	17. Book-I:A Bit Too Bright

Chapter 16:

Harry stood there by the entrance, covered in his invisibility cloak, shocked to a standstill, for what he was looking at couldn't possibly be real! It had to be out of some sort of nightmare!

It was Quirrell, and he was carefully walking in a circle around a tall mirror that stood in the middle of the room, keeping his back to it all the time. He wasn't wearing his turban, and on the back of his head where there should have been plain skin, was a face! A chalk-white gaunt face with glowing red eyes and slits for nostrils. It seemed to be scanning through the mirror, looking for something.

It wasn't hard to figure out who he was looking at, but believing it was something that took a bit more work. As it turned out, apparently Harry _was_ going to be facing Lord Voldemort tonight. Quickly getting over his shock, he decided that there was no point in letting him know about his presence. Better catch him unaware.

Harry activated his Hydromancy powers and sent his mana towards Quirrell's blood, intending to clot it right at the heart and kill him in a stroke. If he was playing some sort of…some sort of host to Lord Voldemort, then killing him wouldn't weigh too heavily on Harry's conscience.

A heavy tendril of mana extended towards Quirrel, and to Harry's utmost shock, it simply bounced off. It was the same sort of resistance he'd felt when going against the troll while trying to control his blood, except it was multiplied a thousandfold. A window popped up.

 **Magical wards detected, no magic can be done on the target's body.**

Harry couldn't even get his mana _near_ Quirrell's body. He must have used the same magic he'd done to protect the troll to protect himself!

As Harry stood there shellshocked, Quirrell straightened back up and looked around the room, having noticed the flickering of the shadows in the room as Harry parted the fire to enter the chamber.

The two faced man looked straight at him through his cloak and smiled. "I wondered whether I'd be meeting you here, Potter," he said calmly.

The face of the Dark Lord behind his head seemed to be ignoring Quirrell and Harry's conversation, continuing to peer at the mirror.

"You expected me?" Harry said with a small tremble in his voice, mentally going through all his options in his head. Gandiva would be too slow; Quirrell would just snap off a killing curse before he even finished notching an arrow. The elemental magic wouldn't do that much damage, his wand magic was _pitifully_ underdeveloped and he hadn't learned strong enough spells to use Runic Burst successfully on someone like Voldemort.

He momentarily considered his Unicorn Boost speed before dismissing it. Quirrell had _hunted down_ a unicorn in the past, and Harry had seen him run _faster_ than the unicorn itself in the forest. His own speed would be useless against an opponent that fast.

"Of course we expected you Potter. My master predicted that you'd be a thorn in our way right from the moment he saw you. Besides, you probably heard that Dumbledore would be out of the school somewhere and decided to follow me. Dumbledore's petty machinations to try and get you to come down these traps were so pathetic to look at." Quirrell replied, chuckling. "He even told me to _pretend to be evil_ so that you'd have some sort of motive to come after the stone. What an idiot!"

Harry pretended to cower while trying to come up with something. For the first time since getting his powers, he was feeling as if he didn't have _anything_ in his arsenal to stop an opponent.

He desperately observed the man again.

 **Quirinus Quirrell**

 **Lv-?**

 **HP-?/?**

 **MP-?/?**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-?**

 **Vit-?**

 **Dex-?**

 **Int-?**

 **Wis-?**

 **Luc-?**

 **?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?**

Nothing.

Gamer's Mind asserted itself, erasing the tendrils of panic that had started to creep in. Hoping that Quirrell couldn't see his eye movements under the cloak, he looked at the familiar object behind Quirrell that the Dark Lord was observing and immediately realized that it was the last protection keeping the stone from the Quirrell.

He had to try and delay Quirrell so that Hermione could get help.

"So what are you going to do to me?" he asked, injecting a small stutter into his voice.

Quirrell snapped his fingers before going back to observing the mirror. Ropes sprang out of thin air and wrapped themselves tightly all around Harry's torso. His cloak fell off of him.

Harry tried to snap them off with brute force. After struggling for a second and failing, he twisted his bound hands around to touch the ropes and unleashed a hot concentrated fire beam, trying to burn them off.

It was working! The rope was shriveling and burning off strand by strand. He'd soon be free! Harry closed his eyes redoubled his focus and mana flow.

A sibilant voice came from in front of him "Fascinating…Quirinus, the bindings."

As focused as he was, he hadn't noticed Quirrell look up from the mirror and come closer. Voldemort was staring at Harry's fiery hands with a glint in his eyes.

The shriveling ropes glowed golden and reknit themselves, completely ignoring the fire that Harry was throwing at it.

"Don't bother," the parasite hissed, "Your fire will not be burning through these ropes now."

Giving in, Harry hesitantly stopped trying to burn the ropes. Voldemort eagerly looked at Harry.

"These abilities…you have no idea how similar we are Harry."

"You could do this too? When you were like me?" Harry asked, morbid curiosity seeping into his voice.

He looked Harry dead in the eyes, his red orbs eager. "Indeed…join me Harry…this power you have…with me it will only end in greatness. Join me…and we will change the _world._ "

 _Join_ him! The man had the nerve to ask him to _join_ him! The man who murdered his parents in cold blood! Harry's tight control over his emotions snapped and his face twisted into a hideous sneer.

"That's all well and good you bastard!" Harry spat at the man, "Only one problem. You killed my family!"

The snakelike lips twisted into a horrible sneer. "And you have no idea what you took from me. I had almost won the war! I had achieved GREATNESS! And _you_ took it all. All those years lost in the forests of Albania…oh how many ways I've thought of hurting you! And even after I show you this kindness, you dare…no…just killing you wouldn't satiate my anger. No. Nothing less than breaking you would…Quirinus!"

Quirrell flipped around and pointed the wand at Harry's head.

" _Crucio,_ " he intoned.

The Cruciatus curse hit Harry and for a second he didn't feel anything, with Gamer's Mind trying its best to diffuse and fight the pain. But it quickly realized that something this powerful couldn't be fought. So it redirected its resources to preserving Harry's sanity and memories.

And then the pain hit. And then the screams began.

* * *

Quirrell cast the curse three more times on the orders of Lord Voldemort, reducing the boy to a blubbering mess on the floor.

Perhaps deciding that this was enough time wasted, his master spoke to him, "That's enough. Make sure his bindings are secure. And see how the Mirror is hiding the stone. I can't see through the first layer of basic wards in my current form. Dumbledore intended Potter to find the stone. Which means that there is a back door, some sort of puzzle or key action that will give us the stone. Find it. "

"Yes My Lord," Quirrell replied before waving his wand, tightening the bindings on the whimpering child even more. Then he turned around towards the mirror and started examining it.

"This mirror is the key to finding the Stone," Quirrell murmured, relaxing a bit now that his master was asleep, tapping his way around the frame of the Mirror of Erised with his wand. "Trust Dumbledore to come up with something like this…"

Quirrell started as he heard a small groan from behind him. The boy was moving around now. "You're lucky master is resting. He likes his victims to stay down." Quirinus said over his shoulder. "Don't move too much. It'll only hurt more."

The boy was going to be dead soon anyway. Might as well save him the needless pain, Quirrell thought, feeling a tiny bit of sympathy for the kid that had just experienced the worst pain he'd probably felt in his entire short life.

"Speaking from experience?" came the wavering and trembling voice of the boy.

"Yes," said Quirrell idly, walking around the mirror to look at the back. "Sometimes…sometimes, I find it hard to follow my master's instructions…he is a great wizard and I am…weak."

He moved back out from behind the mirror and stared hungrily into it. "I see the Stone…" he muttered to himself, "I'm presenting it to my master…but where is it?"

"Was he there in the classroom with you? Near the students?" the boy gasped out, pain evident in his voice.

"He is with me wherever I go," replied Quirrell quietly, not seeing the harm in satisfying the curiosity of a soon to be dead boy. "I met him when I traveled around the world. A foolish young man I was then, full of ridiculous ideas about good and evil. Lord Voldemort showed me how wrong I was. There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it…Since then, I have served him faithfully, although I have let him down many times. He has had to be very hard on me."

He shivered suddenly, the memory of the night in Leaky Cauldron when his master had made him cast the Cruciatus on himself rising to the forefront of his mind. "He does not forgive mistakes easily. When I failed to steal the stone from Gringotts, he was most displeased. He punished me...decided he would have to keep a closer watch on me..."

Focusing back on the mirror Quirrell cursed under his breath, reading the inverted inscription again.

"I don't understand…is the Stone inside the mirror? Should I break it?"

For a moment, he stood there clueless before he decided not to waste time and ask for help. Gulping down the small vial of Unicorn blood he had in his pocket, he spoke, "Help me, master!"

With a strange feeling, he could feel the face on the back of his head come alive. He could feel his master in his head, pondering all he'd seen, before he spoke. "Use the boy…"

Quirrell rounded on the boy. Of course! If Dumbledore intended Potter to find the stone, then using him made sense. Perhaps the mirror would only give the stone to people of a certain age, or physical feature.

He waved his wand, levitating the tightly bound boy upright and floating him over to the mirror. He felt his master extend a significant portion of his own magic towards the boy and envelope him, making sure he'd know if the boy was lying.

Quirrell instructed the boy strictly, "Look in the mirror and tell me what you see."

The boy looked at the mirror, and then glanced longingly at the reflection.

"Well?" said Quirrell impatiently. "What do you see?"

With some hesitation, the boy replied, "I see myself and my friends in the Great Hall, safe. Away from here."

"It's true." came the hissing confirmation of what Quirrell was dreading.

"Damn it!" Quirrell cursed again before waving his wand and sending Potter back to where he was lying earlier. "I'd hoped to avoid drawing too much attention, but ripping through the wards is the only way," he said. As Harry moved aside, he saw Quirrell take out his wand and start waving it.

"Damn it!" Quirrell cursed as he mistakenly latched onto a magic draining ward that started sucking on his core. "These wards are too detailed. I can't get through the second layer. Help me, master."

His Lord spoke. "Let me see it. Give me the control."

"Master, you are not strong enough!" Quirrel whispered fervently, trying to persuade his master to not take over his body. It always ended in too much pain for him.

"I have strength enough…for this…"

Quirrell felt pain equivalent to a dozen Cruciatus curses as the face behind his head sunk back into his skull. Lord Voldemort was taking full possession of his body.

"Hmm," Voldemort whispered, as Quirinus was pushed into a corner of his own mind. It felt good to have control again. Soon, he thought, he would have his own body.

'But for now, let's see what the old coot has done.' he thought as he quickly smothered the ward by the sheer volume of his power, vitally damaging the entire ward system, but draining Quirinus's core in the process.

Then he turned to Harry.

* * *

Neither Quirrell nor Harry had any idea about the sheer genius of this final trap.

A few months before the current events, Albus Dumbledore had set up a Fidelius charm in a corner of the room and placed the stone in it. He then set up a complex switching charm based on two conditions.

1 - The absence of any and all dark magic traces on the person's core

2 - The absence of any intention of using the stone for their own gain.

The charm was then connected to the mirror to help detect the person's intentions.

Should the person want to use the stone, the switching charm wouldn't activate and they wouldn't get it. Should they use a hostage they had kidnapped, the mirror would simply show them their desire to go back home. Should they destroy the mirror, they would fail. The mirror was indestructible.

Absolute Protection.

Then, he had layered the mirror with some nastily powerful wards as a diversion. The sheer simplicity and brilliance of the trap was truly something else.

Had Harry not thought many times in his free afternoons of how he could heal people and enhance his healing skill by using the stone, Quirrell would have found the stone in Harry's pocket, since he wasn't a hostage, but had come to protect the stone.

But he _had_ thought of it, and so the stone was beyond the reach of either of them.

* * *

A plan had formed in Harry's head a few minutes after he'd regained his bearings from the first Cruciatus. All he needed was make sure the timing was perfect to execute it.

Harry saw Quirrelmort turn and walk towards him. His eyes two glowing orbs of red.

"It'll take a few minutes for the wards to decline. Until then, I must tell you something Harry." he said in a jovial tone, bending down to where Harry was lying fully bound and tied.

With a wave of his wand, a piece of cloth appeared and blindfolded Harry.

Harry felt the air brush his face as Voldemort whispered in his ears, "It is much more difficult to withstand a Cruciatus when you can't see it coming. _Crucio!_ "

Harry's mouth let open in a silent scream. It was _so_ much worse with Voldemort casting it. When he let up, Harry was left a blubbering mess.

"Hmm," Voldemort said, "It is _so_ much better when you are casting the curse yourself."

Meanwhile, Harry started putting his plan into action. He sent his mana into his own blood.

Ping!

 **Do you wish to heal - Status: Cruciatus neural damage -70% to all stats.**

 **YES/NO?**

Yes, he thought and felt his pain clear away.

Quirrelmort was gloating while he walked back towards the mirror. Seeing his chance, Harry quickly opened up his inventory and pulled out the small item using his mouth.

With a small smile, he said to the gloating Dark Lord, "You definitely shouldn't have blindfolded me."

"What are you-"

A flashbang rolled up to Quirrelmort's feet.

He looked up at Harry to see him grinning through his blindfold. "Boom bitch"

The flashbang went off with an enormous bang, shredding Quirrell's eardrums due to proximity and rendering him sightless.

Harry had fallen onto the ground. He wriggled about a bit and shook off the blindfold, wincing at his own hurting head as a faint voice filtered through the ringing noise in his ears.

"KILL THE BOY…KILL…HIM NOW! "

Harry flopped around a bit to see Quirrell, with his eyes and ears bleeding, trying to get up onto his feet while his master shouted at him from his parasitic position behind his head. Harry's spirits lifted when he realized that Voldemort had lost full possession over Quirrell's body!

His Gamer's Mind went to work. He was seeing things clearer than ever before. A glance towards the black hellfire still burning in the door gave him an idea.

Hellfire disintegrated all forms of matter. That was what it said in the description.

"Come on hellfire. Don't fail me now," Harry muttered as he struggled over to the fire and brought his bindings into contact with it. With a small hiss, the powerful form of magical fire went to work.

It was working! The hellfire was turning the entire thing into ashes!

With a cry of victory, Harry leapt to his feet and shook off the rope before any of the fire could get on him.

Quirrell was still struggling to get back up, and his parasite still was shouting orders. No magic that Harry knew was going to work against as powerful a sorceror as Voldemort. But Harry didn't need magic to win.

He opened up his inventory and pulled out Gandiva. With Quirrell rendered immobile and disoriented, his legendary bow was his best bet as a powerful enough physical weapon.

Notching explosive arrow after explosive arrow, he let them loose at the man with two faces.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The floor shook hard from the explosions, large cracks forming all across it.

The explosions somehow didn't do any damage, probably because of some sort of protective spell Voldemort had put on himself. But the physical arrows were unstoppable by the anti-magic wards.

The sheer force of the strength of a thousand bows made the four arrows pierce straight through Quirrell and carry him flying, stopping only when the arrows, with Quirrell skewered, embedded themselves straight into the wall.

 **Critical Strike! Explosive Arrow- 4 x (680 x 450%) = 12240 Attack!**

For a second, all was quiet. And then Quirrell lifted his hand in a last ditch effort to perform some deadly curse.

An all-encompassing rage overtook Harry as it finally sunk in that this was the man that had taken his family away from him. This was his parents' murderer. This was their killer!

He started seeing red.

'Unicorn Boost,' Harry commanded in his head before speeding right next to Quirrell. "Take this!" he yelled, driving a devastating Iron Fist straight into his face.

"AAARRRRGHHHH" Quirrell yelled out in pain.

Ping!

 **Perk Shield of Lily activated!**

Harry stopped and stared, barely even noticing the piercing pain in his scar. In front of him, Quirrell's face was blistering and crumbling.

With a fierce new determination, Harry grabbed onto Quirrell's head, using Gamer's Mind to compartmentalize the pain in his scar.

The blisters spread all across Quirrell's body, crumbling and destroying the wards around Quirrell along with his body. Taking the chance, Harry unleashed a massive volume of fire down what was left of Quirrell's throat, turning the entire man into ashes.

And then it was over.

The pain in his scar became too much for even the Gamer's Mind to handle. Harry's knees buckled and he fell to the ground. Through the corner of his eyes, he saw a black smoky cloud escape through the walls.

* * *

Hermione Granger had never run so fast before. She'd never had a good enough reason to.

And now she did.

Dashing through the corridors, she ducked along to the pathways to the dungeons. She was about take a turn to get to the path towards the Potions Professor's office when suddenly a sound rippled through the corridor from in front of her.

"YRROOWWWRR"

It had to be Filch's cat.

Hermione felt conflicted for a second before sense of urgency won over her respect of authority. And she decided that she wasn't far gone enough to consider a _cat_ an authority.

The cat that was looking around the corridor received a prompt kick to her behind, sending her flying into a nearby classrom, the door to which Hermione promptly locked from the outside using a deftly performed _Colloportus._

It would be a few days before she'd realize that she had just slammed the best kick of her life into her Transfiguration Professor's buttocks.

Then she ran as fast as she could until she reached the familiar door to Professor Snape's office.

BANGBANGBANGBANGBANG!

She kept banging on the door as loud as she could. Her efforts were rewarded when suddenly the door slammed open and the greasy-haired Potions Master appeared with an enraged frown on his face.

"MISS GRANGER! What in the name of Merlin are you doing? You just almost completely spoiled a potion that took over six months to brew! What were you th-"

"Quirrell's gone after the Stone Professor!"

Snape's angry tirade halted to a standstill, and he seemed positively thrown off for a second. Hermione rushed to add all she knew about the entire situation before she ended up losing points.

"And Harry's gone after him!"

"WHAT!" the Professor's expression seemed to be oscillating between rage and shock.

"Yessir. We knew Hagrid had let slip how to get past Fluffy and Quirrell already knew all the traps except yours and Harry somehow found out that Quirrell was going after the stone and he sent me to tell you to get Professor Dumbledore but I don't know what to do what do I do what do I do?!" Hermione started breathing heavily and blabbering. She was falling back into a panic attack.

Snape snapped out of his rage and pulled out a vial of potion from the folds of his robes. Quickly unstoppering it with a deft hand, he opened Hermione's mouth and let the light blue potion, which Hermione's mind automatically identified as a Calming potion, flow down her gullet, gently massaging her throat to relax it.

Hermione almost immediately calmed down. Opening the door, Snape ordered, "Get in. Quick." Hermione walked in, closed the door behind her and turned to look at what Professor Snape was doing.

Snape had closed his eyes, standing just off the center of the room, brandishing his wand. After a few quiet seconds, he uttered an incantation she had never heard before.

" _Expecto Patronum_ "

Hermione gasped as wisps of light flew from the wand's tip and condensed into a shape…the shape of an animal. A doe, she realized as Snape went over to the glowing animal and said something into its ears. It nodded and condensed into a small ball before shooting straight through the south wall of the room.

Hermione was left staring at the wall. "What…what was that Professor," she asked hesitantly to the man, who'd gone off to the cooling rack where several cauldrons of potions were cooling.

"A message to Professor Dumbledore. You are not to speak about it to anybody."

"Yes sir."

Opening up the lid of a copper one, he filled two small crystal phials before pocketing them and headed straight towards the door.

Suddenly Hermione was filled with a terrible sense of trepidation. "I'm not staying back. I'm coming with you. To get Harry."

Snape made a small noise of frustration before sighing.

"Fine. I don't have time to argue with you. Just don't get in the way and don't be slow. If you see anything that could kill you, run."

"Yessir," Hermione said, running behind the Professor who started walking with long urgent strides out of the office. A wave of his wand and the door shut behind them.

"How do you get past the dog?" Snape suddenly asked when they finished climbing the stairs up to the third floor.

"What?" Hermione asked

"If you're coming along then you might as well make yourself useful Granger. How do you get past the dog? I presume Hagrid has told you."

"Oh. Um…music. It falls asleep if you play music." Hermione replied.

Snape's face turned a little purple. He started muttering to himself. Hermione caught some phrases like "senile old coot" and "protecting a legendary artifact using a guard dog that drops with a lullaby" and the occasional swear word in between.

As soon as they reached the corridor, Professor Snape handed Hermione one of the vials.

"We will use it to bypass my trap," he said to her as the only explanation.

Walking up to the door, he slammed it open and before the dog could even do as much as move, conjured up a small violin that started playing itself. The three heads slammed to the floor asleep. He pulled out his wand and levitated the dog from over the trapdoor and Hermione opened it.

Snape looked down the trapdoor before he waved his wand and sent a floating orb of light down the entire fall. The bottom was illuminated. There was pure stone and what looked like ashes there. Snape quickly cast a cushioning charm and jumped down.

With her fingers crossed, Hermione jumped too.

She landed with a small oompf and quickly bounced back onto her legs, only to run after Professor Snape who was already walking as fast as he could down the long passageway.

They came upon a brilliantly lit chamber, with hundreds of winged keys fluttering and tumbling through the air.

Hermione noticed Snape halt to take a long look at the door with a massive hole in it before looking back up at the fluttering wings. A corner of her mind realized that those must have taken hours to enchant. She felt a stab of pity for poor Professor Flitwick, whose hard made trap wasn't even given the consideration of being solved.

They stepped through the hole into the pile of rubble that was the next chamber, which genuinely made her fear for Harry's life more than ever. Snape stared grimly at the rubble for a second before vanishing most of it away with his wand and clearing a path to the next room.

As they entered the chamber and Hermione's eyes adjusted to the relative darkness, the only reason her knees didn't buckle was the calming potion Snape had fed her minutes ago.

A troll was sitting in the middle of the chamber, rubbing its head, which seemed swollen.

"Stay close" Snape said before snapping off a powerful stunning spell at the troll's eyes, which were its weak spot. It should have been knocked out in that one shot.

The spell didn't do anything but make it angry.

"GURH!" it yelled angrily before pushing itself up.

The troll stood to its full height, larger than even the one in Halloween. Hermione whimpered.

" _Stupefy! Stupefy! REDUCTO! SECTUMSEMPRA!_ "

Snape kept sending jet after jet of magic at the troll, only for it to dissipate as if it never hit.

Unknown to him, much like the other troll in Halloween, Quirrell had put magical wards on this troll too, making it immune to most forms of offensive magic.

The troll, now rankled with rage, swept an arm to punch whatever was trying to hurt it.

Hermione dropped to the ground with a loud shriek. Snape, instead, fell prey to the same lack of common sense that wizards often gained by becoming overdependent on magic. Instead of dropping, he started yelling obstructing spells at the incoming hand.

" _Impedimenta! Impedimenta IMPEDIMEN_ oompf"

The troll's hand slammed Snape straight across his midsection and sent him flying straight back towards the chess chamber that was previous to this one. The troll ignored Hermione and angrily stomped over to the door that was ten times too small for its size and tried pushing his hand through and grab Snape to wring the life out of him.

Peering through the small gaps, Hermione was relieved to see that while Snape's head was bleeding and he looked unconscious, he was too far for the troll to reach. All she'd have to do was wait for the troll to let up and she could sneak out and try to wake hi-

BOOM! BOOM!BOOM! BOOM!

Hermione's head snapped towards the direction of the explosions which were coming from the next chamber. Any thoughts of helping Snape vanished from her head as she shot like a bullet towards the door that led onward, opening it and passing through before the troll even so much as noticed her.

As the hellfire started up and trapped her inside the room, she eyed the small bottle of potion that she held in her hand. With a swig of the vial of potion and a chill travelling down her body, she stepped through the black hellfire and into the final chamber, helping her friend the only thing on her mind.

* * *

An interesting thing about magic draining wards is how they become stronger and larger as they absorb more magic. The ward around the Mirror of Erised, having sucked up the not insignificant amount of magic Voldemort had fed it, had stopped absorbing magic, overfilled for a while.

But as Voldemort's spirit fled, the ward finished assimilating the magic, and without the other protective wards suppressing it; that Voldemort had destroyed; it grew in size to cover the whole room, placing Harry inside the ward's sphere of influence.

Hermione, who had just entered the room through the hellfire, came in contact with the ward's new boundary and let out a gut-wrenching scream as her magic started being slowly ripped away from her body.

Upon hearing her scream, Harry's Gamer's Mind went into overdrive fighting his panic as he forced himself to get to his feet and quickly observed at the now glowing hemisphere of crackling yellow light that Hermione's hand seemed stuck to.

 **Exhaure Ward**

 **A magic draining ward spell capable of growing, sucking any magic from any creature it touches. Usually used along with suppressors to only magically exhaust the target. When used without them, it can keep absorbing magic and grow upto a hundred meters in radius.**

Harry stared aghast at the description. This could end up killing everyone in the school.

He quickly cast an observe and took a look at Hermione's mana,

 **Hermione Granger Lv-7 (Status: Magical Drainage -1MP per second)**

 **HP: 350/350**

 **MP: 200 . . . . . 199 . . . . .198 . . . . . 197/200**

It seemed to be falling slowly, but he still barely had four minutes. Harry tried to remember anything that could help. He tried using Healing on the status. It didn't take.

"Okay Harry focus, focus, focus!" he muttered and tried to remember all he knew about wards.

Wards needed to be anchored. This one was centered over the mirror. Harry quickly started looking around the mirror, trying to find the wardstone just like the one he'd found at the Dursleys, until he saw runes on the mirror's back glowing blue.

The mirror _was_ the wardstone. Elated at making at least _some_ progress, Harry started looking around trying to find anything that could stop the ward, trying frantically to anyhow save his friend.

Quickly pulling out Gandiva, he shot an explosive arrow at it. It vaporized to nothingness before even touching the mirror.

Suddenly, he stilled, remembering the ward's description.

 _. . . A magic draining ward spell capable of growing, sucking any magic it touches . . ._

And he knew what to do.

Harry walked to the front of the mirror and hesitated. Ron had once told him about how one of his uncles died of a small magical overdose. And his Runic Burnout description said it started causing damage it HP after his MP was filled. This would kill him. He knew it.

His head snapped back towards the door when Hermione's screams stopped completely.

She had screamed her throat dry and was curled up, tears streaming from her eyes as the ward continued leeching on her magic.

'So many plans I had.' he thought with a sigh, 'To be fair, dying trying to save a friend isn't exactly the worst end possible,' he thought as he placed his hand on the mirror and pushed a few points worth of mana into the ward.

Then, steeling himself, he tugged!

Ping!

 **Runic Burnout Lv-5 (44%)**

 **A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.**

 **100 MP absorbed takes down 1 HP**

 **Do you wish to use it on: Exhaure Ward?**

 **YES/NO**

Harry pressed yes. With an audible snap, the ward disconnected from Hermione and started growing smaller.

Harry could feel the mana from the ward pouring into his body as his reserves filled themselves and a red window popped up flashing in his vision.

 **Extreme mana overdose risk. Risking potential fatality. Recommend abort!**

Harry ignored it and kept pulling, his spirits heightening as he saw Hermione sit up and look around. Her eyes widened and she struggled to get onto her feet.

"Stay where you are Hermione. Don't move. This ward just tried to suck up all your magic. You need rest. Let me handle this."

"Harry…what are you doing?" she almost seemed too scared to ask.

"I'm breaking it. Absorbing it. Destroying it. Sucking back the magic from it. Call it whatever…" He replied as he pulled up his HP.

 **HP: 85/600 (+10 HP per second)**

"How are you even doing that!? And you can't absorb this much magic at once! It would kill you!" she screamed, her throat entirely too hoarse.

"Probably," he said, "But this ward sucks on magic and grows, so the moment I try to cross its borders it'll start sucking _my_ magic and grow. I have to end it here. From the inside."

The ward was nearing the mirror now, growing smaller and smaller. Nearing the end. There wasn't much more time left, Harry thought.

"Harry I'm sure Dumbledore is coming. Let him handle it. Don't do this please."

"I'm sorry."

His eyes had started glowing gold as colors of all kind flooded his vision and replaced the objects that he saw in the room. He could see the golden brown of the bricks of Hogwarts around him, the violet of the mirror and a shivering soft blue silhouette where Hermione was. He could see her struggling to get up and fall down, her legs too shaky to support her.

"Hermione."

"Yes Harry," her voice shook terribly.

"I think I'm seeing magic."

"What…what does it look like?" She seemed to have given up, her blue silhouette lay unmoving near the end of the door as she kept talking to him in between sobs.

"Beautiful. A bit too bright. But beautiful."

There were a few more moments of silence, where only Hermione's sobs wrecked through the chamber. Harry was struck by the parallel of tonight's events with the time with John the werewolf had died in that forest all those months ago.

"Hermione"

"Yes Harry"

"I'm glad we became friends."

"Me too," Harry heard before his world exploded in a white light and his heart let out a small flutter of heartbeats, and then stopped.

* * *

"Did he just-"

"Yes."

"But-"

"Yes."

"We have to do something," The man, the one that had given Harry his powers on a day that now felt a millennia ago, said with his features awash with light from the floating screen he was staring at with shock evident on his face. The screen was playing out the events of the chamber of the final trap.

"Indeed," said the woman resolutely to him as she turned to the screen and pointed her wand at it.

In the bright, vision-obscuring light that had filled the last chamber, the Mirror of Erised shattered.

The complex switching spell that Dumbledore had set up lost its intention detecting artifact, nullifying one of its requirements.

It activated and started scanning for its remaining requirement, the purest magical core without dark magic. Coming upon Harry's overflowing magical core, the spell activated and the philosopher's stone was switched to the possession of the purest magical core in the room, dropping into Harry's bleeding hand.

It slowly dissolved and entered Harry's bloodstream, the high concentration of magic in the atmosphere and in Harry's blood causing it to bond with his very DNA.

Harry's heart gave a giant heave and started beating again.

* * *

 **Here it is. The climax of Book 1. Did the fight seem good? Did the emotional moments hit? Did the whole chapter feel cohesive? Let me know all your thoughts. I always need and appreciate the feedback.**

 **Epilogue coming up.**


	18. Epilogue-I:Finis Coronat Opus

Epilogue:

Albus Dumbledore wasn't enjoying himself.

He was stuck in the seats of Wizengamot for another session that involved nothing but the most trivial of matters, like the latest issue that was brought to table, passing a law preventing the goblins from buying up all the quality tea leaves and making it difficult for the everyday witch and wizard to find and buy good tea.

A particularly annoying voice drifted into his ears. "…goblins don't even drink tea. They cannot. It would mess their insides up and give them a sick stomach…"

Glancing at the right side of the chamber, he caught sight of the wrinkled smile on the face of Lord Mulciber. He was starting to get a pretty good feel of what the law was _really_ all about.

Resisting the temptation to transfigure the so-called 'expert on goblin societal behavior' into a gerbil, Albus quickly sifted through the proposed law and looked through the points it proposed before underlining the real hidden key.

 _…aforementioned. The culminating solution to the entire gargantuan issue of goblin nation buying up tea they don't even use is to prevent shops from selling to them. Thus the…_

And that was the heart of the matter, Albus thought.

Albus knew that goblins were some of the highest consumers of tea in the entire wizarding market.

While the expert was right about them not being able to _drink_ it, most goblins did process and use the _odor_ of tea as a stimulant to keep functioning in their fifteen hour working days.

Albus had never quite understood how that worked.

But that meant that the biggest buyer of tea in all of Magical Britain was the Gringotts bank, buying tea in bulk for its employees.

Albus _also_ knew that international tea trade was one of the _biggest_ sources of taxes for the ministry. By prohibiting goblins from buying tea, the International Magical Tea Industry would lose its biggest buyer in Magical Britain. This would cause them to pull out a lot of their resources from Britain, making shops close down and hundreds of jobs in the tea industry disappear.

And most importantly, the ministry would stop getting most of the import taxes on tea.

And then, Albus deduced, Lord Mulciber would call a meeting and call for a vote to reallocate all the tax money going into the Muggleborn Scholarship to other departments. Scared by the dropping market and the threat of a collapsing ministry due to lack of money, Wizengamot would vote to abolish the scholarship.

And Mulciber would get his wish, not giving a rat's arse about how many lives he destroyed in the way.

Albus sighed, struck with a sudden bout of sorrow as he realized that this was what the wizarding elite had become, taking whatever served their interest uncaring for how many got hurt along the way.

He took a resolute breath, pushing away those thoughts.

As long as he was alive, he'd keep fighting against that. Mulciber's plan was good. But he was Albus Dumbledore. He didn't just dabble in this game, he lived in it.

He caught the eye of Elphias Doge and gave him a subtle hand sign, signaling that he recommended a NO vote on this bill. Elphias whispered the message to his nearest seated member and the message spread across the entire light side members of the Wizengamot.

Seeing that, Albus interrupted the expert, "That's enough Miss Burgundy. The chair would like to thank you for your statement." the woman bowed low and was escorted out of the chamber by the clerk.

"It is now time to call for a vote. Those who wish to vote _for_ the bill, raise your hand" a lot of the traditionalists raised their hands. Some traditionalists and most neutrals didn't. They had clearly been left out of the loop on the unnecessarily convoluted plan Mulciber had cooked up.

'Those who wish to vote _against,_ raise your hand.' The bill was shot down by majority vote, and the wizarding world was safe again.

At least until the next meeting.

"The bill is voted down and taken off the table. This meeting of this august body is now adjourned." Albus slammed the gavel and the meeting was over.

He stood from his seat and headed to the attached loo in his office. He wanted to get some good food in a proper Italian restaurant before heading back to Hogwarts, and didn't want to have to relieve himself in the common toilet.

Entering the toilet, he hiked up his robes and let it flow, observing with a small smile that his bladder functions were as healthy as ever.

Of course, the universe could never be _not_ messing up Albus Dumbledore's day. Just as he was washing his hands, a bright doe patronus barreled in through the loo door and started speaking in Snape's voice.

"Quirrell's gone after Stone. Potter's gone after him. Get here as soon as possible!"

Albus dropped his hiked up robes in shock, getting water all over them. He cursed. After a few wandless _Tergeos_ , he quickly slammed out of the door.

"FAWKES! The mirror chamber! Quick!"

The red phoenix flew straight at the old man from the gilded perch he sat on. Dumbledore pulled out his wand and grabbed Fawkes's tail feathers, disappearing from the Ministry building in a burst of flame.

Albus appeared at the entrance of the chamber of the mirror and took stock of the entire room with a not inconsiderable amount of shock.

He took in the pile of ashes with Quirinus's fireproof robes lying in them, Harry Potter lying unmoving in the arms of a weeping Hermione Granger, the unbreakable Mirror of Erised somehow shattered, the stone gone from its spot in the corner and the circle on the wall that Hogwarts wards had marked entirely black to let the headmaster know that a malignant spirit had passed through there. One even the Hogwarts wards couldn't contain.

Albus's eyes widened as he pieced together what he'd missed the entire year. Quirinus Quirrell was using his body to host the only spirit powerful enough to evade Hogwarts wards. Lord Voldemort.

Quickly making his way up to the weeping Hermione, Albus placed a hand on the shoulders.

The girl gave a quick start and fainted.

Cursing himself for not realizing the amount of mental stress the girl must have been under, he gently pried the girl's eyes open and slowly dipped into her mind to find out what she had seen.

His eyes moistened as he saw the last few minutes of what had happened.

Pulling out of her mind as gently as he could, Albus dried his eyes and quickly spoke to his avian friend.

"Fawkes. Would you please get her and Severus from the chess chamber to Poppy?" the ancient phoenix let out a trill and grabbed onto the catatonic Hermione's shoulder and disappeared in a burst of fire.

Albus activated the rarely used magic sensing abilities in his glasses, and looked at Harry.

The boy's emerald green core was almost exploding out of his body, and yet somehow the thick red tendrils of magic that Albus had associated with the Philosopher's Stone were coiling around the green magic, restraining it, stopping the magic from just exiting out of his body in a burst and instantly vaporizing him.

But all was not well. That much-constrained magic in his body was forcing his heart to beat at over a _three hundred_ beats a minute.

Albus turned off the magic sensing in his glasses. No matter how young a person might be, they wouldn't be able to maintain that high an heart rate for too long without dying.

He cursed. There were only two people in the world knowledgeable enough about the philosopher's stone and its magic to help Harry. And they were the some of the only two people in the world that had functioning anti-phoenix travel wards on their residence.

Albus quickly snapped off a patronus before getting Fawkes to teleport both Harry and him to the Headmaster's office.

He laid the boy down by the fire. Picking up a handful of floo powder and throwing it into the fireplace, he hoped to all heavens that his friend would get his patronus message and open his floo link soon.

To his relief, the fire turned green in less than a few minutes. Picking up the boy, he stood in the midst of the fire and said the floo address out loud.

" _Flamel Farm"_

And he stepped out a second later in the living room of a house in the Faroe Islands in the Norwegian sea. A middle-aged couple in robes were looking at him and the unconscious boy in his hands worriedly.

"What happened Albus? You sounded worried." The man, Nicholas Flamel, asked while the woman, Perenelle Flamel, peered at the boy worriedly.

Albus put Harry down on a nearby sofa and quickly explained what he knew and how, for some reason, the philosopher stone seemed to have merged into Harry Potter. He also told them of what he'd seen of his core and how the Stone's magic was both killing him and keeping him alive at the same time.

Perenelle, the more proficient healer of the two millennium old magicals, pushed closer to the prone boy and her eyes changed color into a bright golden as she looked at him.

Albus recognized the rarest of all magical talents. Natural mage sight.

"You're right," she said, placing her fingers on Harry's pulse, "I can see the Stone's magic restraining all the excess magic from the ward. But his blood pressure and heart rate are skyrocketing."

Nicholas frowned. "But how did it all even happen? Didn't I give you the stone to _protect_ it? How was a first-year child even able to get _close_ to it?"

Perenelle's eyes snapped back into their usual brown and she started giving orders, falling into her healer's mindset. "No time for talk now. Nicholas, go prepare the bedroom for surgery. The poison from all the minerals of the stone will end up killing the boy before the magical overdose does. We need to get it out."

Turning to Albus, she said, "Albus, upstairs second room to the right, a silver-framed pair of bellows should be hanging near the wall. Bring it to me. Oh and a pair of dragonhide gloves from the same room please."

Both men snapped to attention, and dropping their impending argument, walked off briskly to perform their allocated tasks.

Albus jogged upstairs and picked up the bellows and a pair of gloves before quickly returning to the living room in a few seconds with everything Perenelle had asked for.

She was waving her wand over Harry, and Dumbledore could see the redness in his face slowly disappearing. "Gloves" she demanded with her left hand, not stopping her casting with her right hand. With a few last waves, she pocketed her wand and put on the gloves, grabbing the bellows and wrapping Harry's hands around its handles. She then cast sticking charms on the handles, making sure Harry's hands didn't move.

Wrapping her own hand around Harry's, she aimed the bellows towards the fireplace and pumped. A massive stream fire came flying out of the nozzle and into the fireplace. She kept pumping, Harry's hands attached to the handles.

Activating the artificial mage sight on his glasses, Albus realized what she was doing. Since she couldn't make Harry use magic with his wand when he was unconscious, she was using the magical bellows to remove the excess magic from his system. And the dragonhide gloves were to make sure it pulled Harry's magic and not Perenelle's.

It was working. The green core was shrinking, slowly. Albus watched as it stopped straining against the red tendrils of the stone's magic and started growing smaller and smaller, until it settled at a constant stable sphere in the middle of Harry's chest.

"You did it Perenelle." Dumbledore said with a smile.

"The hell I did," the woman said angrily. "If we don't get the stone's red magic strands to loosen up, his core will _forever_ remain in his chest. _Unmoving_. He won't be able to use magic. He'll just become a squib that heals fast and occasionally shits out gold. I swear Albus, once we get him stable, you and I are going to have _words_."

Albus gulped.

"ROOM"S READY," came Nicholas's loud yell.

"Come on, let's get him to the bedroom."

They floated Harry to the room and set him down on the bed.

"We're going to get a lot of his blood out and then remove the minerals that could kill him," Perenelle said as she waved her wand and a lot of Harry's left arm lit up with a glowing yellow light.

"The minerals haven't made their way to the heart. We should be fine draining his arm and then feeding him a lot of blood replenishing potions. Albus, potions are in the cupboard. Nicholas, I'll be pulling the blood out so I need you to make a large cut in the wrist when I say and immediately heal it after I finish pulling out the blood."

"Got it." Nicholas said as Albus went over to the cupboard and pulled out a few vials of the blood replenishing potion and sat down on the bed near Harry's head, getting ready to feed him the potions.

Perenelle took a deep breath and closed a tourniquet around Harry's shoulder. "Nicholas, cut in three…two…one…now!"

Nicholas sent a _Diffindo_ wandlessly and made a cut while Perenelle immediately started pulling the blood out from the wound into a beaker using waves of her wand.

After a few seconds, Perenelle snapped, "Nicholas, heal! Albus, potion!" Albus tipped two vials of blood replenishing potions down Harry's throat and Nicholas healed the cut.

Harry's heart rate normalized and his fever started going down. All that was left was the stone's magic that threatened to turn him into a squib.

"Nicholas, do we have any of those rubies left? Could you get one, please?"

Nicholas nodded and pulled out a ruby the size of Harry's fist from a nearby drawer. "You want me to help?"

Perenelle nodded. "I want you to siphon off the stone's magic. As much as you can. Just make sure his core isn't all bound up. Once you free his core enough, it'll assimilate the rest of the stone's magic."

Nicholas gave a sharp nod and placed a hand on Harry's chest, closing his eyes.

Albus's curiosity won him over and he walked over to Perenelle before asking in a whisper. "I must ask Perenelle. How can Nicholas manipulate the stone's magic and you can't."

"Nicholas _made_ the stone Albus. The stone's magic _is_ his magic. Of course he can control it. He's the _only_ one who can control it." Perenelle replied tensely.

Nicholas's eyes opened, and he lifted his hand from Harry's chest, pulling out a glowing red ball of pure magic, before putting it into the ruby, which glowed for a second and changed from a dark burgundy to a lighter blood red color.

Albus strongly suspected that it had now become the new Philosopher's Stone.

Activating his glasses' mage sight, he looked at Harry's core, only to see it suck in the small remaining specks of the stone's magic; the ones that Nicholas hadn't been able to siphon out; into itself.

'His prospects of becoming a Healer just went up a thousandfold,' Albus mused to himself.

"There, I got most of it out," Nicholas said, dropping the new Stone into his pocket. "A couple of days with Poppy and he'll be fit as a fiddle"

With Harry safe and stable, Nicholas, Perenelle, and Albus conjured up some chairs and sat down to talk.

"Tell me everything. From the beginning." Nicholas ordered.

And Albus did, not hiding anything from his mentors.

He told them of how he'd seen Harry's shields and suspected him to be dark. Of how he set up this test that was tailored for Harry to beat. Of how he used the mirror to hide the stone.

And how he messed up with Quirrell.

Nicholas sighed, massaging his head. "I'm not going to lie Albus. You have made your fair share of egregious mistakes this year. "

Albus rushed to apologize. "Nicholas I assure you, you have my sincerest apologies about the stone . . ."

Nicholas fixed him with a steely glare. "If you think I'm angry about the stone and not because you put the life of an innocent eleven-year-old at risk, then perhaps we don't know each other as well as we thought we did."

Albus was shocked into silence.

Perenelle stepped in. "Regardless, if what you say is true and Voldemort did indeed come after the stone, it might be in all of our favor to announce to the world that the stone is being destroyed after this mess. To keep him from coming after it again."

Nicholas seemed to think about it. "Hmm…agreed. I think it's high time we got ourselves a new life, isn't it? We should move to the British Isles and become more… _active_ members of the wizarding society."

"Yes!" Perenelle said quickly, in vocal agreement with the plan. "I'm getting rather fed up of this island."

Albus hesitantly spoke up as a plan formed in his head.

"In that case…I think I have something in mind."

* * *

Harry's eyes snapped open.

 **You have slept in you a hospital bed, HP and MP have been restored 90% each. All ailments and negative status effects have been cured.**

He blinked. He blinked again. Was he dead? If so, Afterlife looked oddly like the Hogwarts hospital wing. He looked around, only to find Albus Dumbledore slumped over a cushioned chair, eyes closed. Without his wrinkled smile and the twinkling eyes on his face, Harry couldn't help but think that he looked strangely older when he was asleep.

Suddenly,

Ping!

Ping!

Ping!

Ping!

Ping!

Ping!

Ping!

A bunch of screens popped into existence right in front of him.

A bit annoyed, he pushed all the screens to the side for later and was about to say something to wake Dumbledore when suddenly, something caught in his throat and he started coughing loudly.

An old wizened hand handed him a glass of water, which he downed as soon as he could.

"Good afternoon, Harry," said Dumbledore as he took back the glass and pulled out a small vial holding a golden viscous liquid. He offered it to Harry. "For the sore throat."

Harry took the vial. "What potion is this sir?" he asked in his scratchy voice.

Dumbledore chuckled. "Just honey, Harry. I usually find it to be soothing the throat after long hours of talking in the Wizengamot."

Feeling a little stupid, he downed the honey, instantly feeling better in his throat.

Harry looked around him. He was lying in a bed with white linen sheets, and next to him was a table piled high with what looked like half a candy shop.

"Tokens from your friends and admirers," said Dumbledore, beaming. "What happened down there in between you, Professor Quirrell and Miss Granger is a complete secret, so, naturally, the whole school knows about most of it. I believe your friends Misters Fred and George Weasley were responsible for trying to send you a toilet seat. No doubt they thought it would amuse you. Madam Pomfrey, however, felt it might not be very hygienic, and confiscated it."

"How long have I been in here?"

"Three days. Miss Granger will be most relieved you have come round, she has been extremely worried."

Harry's eyes widened. "Sir! Hermione! The ward!"

"She is well. Madam Pomfrey is very good at what she does."

A loud trill interrupted their conversation. Harry turned and looked at the window behind him. Hedwig and Fawkes were perched on the sill. Harry was shocked to see her out in front of Dumbledore.

Dumbledore must have interpreted the shock on Harry's face incorrectly, because he said, "She's chosen you for a partner Harry. She followed Fawkes here from the forest and has been helping you with her tears since. She looks to be pretty young, but undoubtedly will be a worthy partner to you. It is a great honor to be chosen by a phoenix. Although after what you did in that chamber, latching onto that ward of your own free will to break that powerful a ward, just to save your friend…I can honestly say she could not have chosen a more worthy partner."

Harry was elated. Hedwig had solved the issue of her being a secret by herself! He was so proud of her!

He turned back to Dumbledore, who was still talking.

"I remember seeing her flying into your window in the Ravenclaw tower once. She must have been considering you for being her partner for quite a long time. Fawkes tells me she likes to go by Hedwig."

Harry hesitated a second before asking something "Sir…why were the traps protecting the stone so easy? Surely they weren't going to stop any thief?"

Dumbledore took a deep breath. "A good friend told me to tell you the truth," he looked at Fawkes," And that is what I shall do. I have done you a great disservice Harry. I've doubted you. Thought you corrupted by Lord Voldemort's essence. Most of the traps were tests for you Harry. I'm afraid to say that after seeing your shields, I was afraid…afraid of having another Lord Voldemort pass through Hogwart's halls. And so I became blind in suspicion and fear, not noticing the changes in Quirinus…not noticing Lord Voldemort…near my students."

Dumbledore buried his head in his hands, continuing to speak.

"I will not ask for your forgiveness Harry. That would be too much to ask for. I would instead ask you to believe that I will do my best to one day earn it."

Harry didn't know how to feel. On one hand, he had been manipulated, and on the other hand, he had a strong feeling that Dumbledore was being sincere.

Taking a deep breath, Harry said, "It's…it's alright headmaster. Your heart was in the right place. Just…try not to do it again."

There was a few moments of silence.

"What happened to the stone Professor?"

Dumbledore looked up, smiling a bit. "Didn't I tell you? It's been destroyed. "

"Destroyed?" said Harry blankly, "But Nicholas Flamel-"

"Oh, you know about Nicholas?" said Dumbledore, sounding quite delighted. "You did do the thing properly, didn't you? Well, Nicholas and I have had a little chat, and agreed it's all for the best."

"But that means he and his wife will die, won't they?"

"They have enough Elixir stored to set their affairs in order and then, yes, then they will die."

Dumbledore smiled at the look of incredulousness on Harry's face.

"To one as young as you, I'm sure it seems incredible, but to Nicolas and Perenelle, it really is like going to bed after a very, very long day. After all, to the well-organized mind, death is but the next great adventure."

Harry dropped that subject and moved on to the next one, "And Voldemort…I saw him escape through the walls in the chamber…He isn't gone is he?"

"I'm glad you've taken to using his name Harry," Dumbledore said out of the blue.

"I saw what he was…in that chamber. I've just decided not to give that _thing_ power over me."

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled. "Very well put indeed. And as for Voldemort, no, Harry, he is not. He is still out there somewhere, perhaps looking for another body to share…not being truly alive, he cannot be killed. Nevertheless, Harry, while you may only have delayed his return to power, it will merely take someone else who is prepared to fight what seems a losing battle next time…and if he is delayed again, and again, why, he may never return to power."

There was another short silence. This time, Dumbledore broke it.

"Now, enough questions. I've wanted to ask you, how do you like the contact lenses Madam Pomfrey had me buy for you?

"Contact lenses?" Harry said, suddenly realizing he hadn't even been wearing his glasses all this time, and had been able to see perfectly clearly!

"Why yes. Hadn't you noticed? They're a new thing these days, but Madam Pomfrey insisted you needed them, what with your glasses being too out of prescription."

Contacts. Huh. So that was why he could see everything much clearer than ever before.

"Thank you, Professor. They're great."

Dumbledore waved away his thanks. "Think nothing of it. Now rest. We'll be expecting you at Great Hall at dinner tomorrow." He stood, banishing the chair with a wave of his hand.

"Harry…my boy…never in my years at Hogwarts have I ever been prouder of a student than I am of you right now." Dumbledore's eyes seemed a little moist as he patted Harry's knee and left.

* * *

After Dumbledore was gone, Harry had pulled all his screens back into his vision and started going through them.

 **Quest Success!**

 **Protect the Philosopher's Stone.**

 **Stop Voldemort and Quirrell**

 **Don't die**

 **Rewards,**

 **100,000 exp**

 **The Turban of Glory**

 **+5 Skill Disc**

Harry waved this one away and pulled out the disc with +5 Stat written on it from his inventory before observing it.

 **Stat disc**

 **Gives the number of level ups as displayed on top to the specified skill.**

Harry promptly used it on the only skill he most needed to level up.

Ping!

 **Skill has leveled up due to using a skill disc!**

 **Critical strike! Lv-9 (60%)**

 **A precise strike that can cause 700% damage to the target.**

 **Chance of success- Luc+Dex**

That would be helping him take down some seriously hard bosses. Harry nodded and pulled out the next window, which sent his eyebrows disappearing into his hairline.

 **Due to unprecedented exposure to the Philosopher's Stone, you have gained a permanent boost!**

 **+1000HP**

 **+1000MP**

This single boost was more health and mana than he'd have gotten in a dozen levels! This could be the real breakthrough in his Gamer powers!

Wondering what it meant by unprecedented exposure, Harry swiped through and opened the next window.

 **Due to unprecedented exposure to the Philosopher's, choose one of the following skills to learn.**

 **-Healing skill: Healing touch**

 **Allows user to fully revive one being a day, no matter how badly they're hurt or how close they are to death, with a simple touch. Will only work on beings weaker than the user and less than 10 levels above user.**

 **-Moneymaker skill: Midas Touch**

 **Allows user to convert metals to gold by touch when activated by the process of basic alchemical transmutation. Will only work on non magical and non ferromagnetic metals.**

Harry looked at the options available to him and knew he didn't need to think too much. The second one was useless for him. Sure it was cool and would make him a lot of money, but he was sure that he could easily make more than enough money by killing zombies in IDs. Healing someone from the brink of death was something Harry could easily see the benefit in.

He selected the first skill.

 **Are you sure you want, Healing Touch?**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry pressed yes.

Ping!

 **You have acquired a new skill!**

 **Healing touch, Lv-MAX**

 **Allows user to fully revive one being a day, no matter how badly they're hurt or how close they are to death, with a simple touch. Will only work on beings weaker than the user and less than 10 levels above user.**

And the next one too, left Harry shell shocked.

 **Due to you sucking up deadly amount of magic and surviving, you gained a new skill!**

 **Mage Sight, Lv-MAX**

 **You can see and sense magic. Magic shall rarely catch you unaware.**

Easily seeing the great benefit in this, Harry grinned and swiped over to the next one.

 **Due to finally getting a clue and fixing your eyes, Bad Eyesight Handicap removed, skill leveled up 4 times!**

 **Language: Modern English, Lv-MAX**

 **You have a perfect understanding of modern english.**

 **+100% speed in reading**

In that moment, Harry wanted to shoot himself in the head.

"All that much reading," he muttered to himself, growing louder by the second, "So much pain...AND I COULD HAVE JUST BROUGHT NEW GLASSES! ARRRRGGGGGGGHHHHH!"

Angrily swiping through to the next window, Harry saw that this one was a new title.

 **You gained a new title!**

 **Gold Digger- All enemies only drop relatively high amounts of money and nothing else when title is equipped.**

Glad that he hadn't chosen the Midas Touch, he moved on to the last screen, which was, finally, the level up screen.

 **You have leveled up!**

 **Harry Potter**

 **Health-1675/1675**

 **Mana-1425/1425**

 **The Gamer**

 **Title-The Boy who Lived**

 **Level-12 Exp-187773/265000**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **STR-14**

 **VIT-20(+4)=24**

 **DEX-19(+4)=23**

 **INT-34**

 **WIS-37**

 **LUC-24**

 **POINTS-10**

 **MONEY- 2025£ / 2097G 188S 56K**

 **Harry Potter is a wizard, the son of Lily Potter and James Potter. He is a new fledgling wizard at Hogwarts. He likes hanging with his new friends and divides his time between figuring out insanely complicated political manipulations and honing his unusual magical skills as the Gamer in secret. Harry loves his parents, and wants to help the world they died protecting.**

 **Status- wizard, giving Harry +4 VIT, +4 DEX and the ability to control magic, talk to snakes, control his appearance and look cool.**

Harry smiled at the massive mana pool he had now. He could just kill legion zombies by the droves now. He wondered what the next higher level of bosses would be.

Feeling curious about something he'd seen in the first window, Harry dipped his hand into his inventory and pulled out the Turban of Glory before observing it.

 **Turban of Glory**

 **A turban that can protect the wearer from all kinds of extreme weather. It can also take the form of a shirt.**

Shrugging, Harry dumped it back into the inventory.

Carefully, Harry whispered a goodnight to the sleeping Hedwig on the nearest windowsill and covered himself with a blanket, falling asleep.

* * *

Madam Pomfrey was a nice woman, but she was very strict.

"Just five minutes," Harry pleaded. The woman seemed to hate visitors as if anyone who entered the hospital wing would beat up her patients with a beater's bat.

"Absolutely not."

"You let Professor Dumbledore in…"

"Well, of course, that was the Headmaster, quite different. You need rest."

"I am resting, look, lying down and everything. Oh, come on, Madam Pomfrey, please?"

Ping!

 **New skill created!**

 **Puppy Dog Eyes, Lv-2**

 **You can persuade people to do your bidding by using your beautiful green eyes and the proper puppy dog face. Works especially well on females.**

 **(Luc + Lv of Theatrics - Age)% chance of working**

 **+10% if target is a female**

"Oh, very well," she relented, "But five minutes only." And she let Hermione in.

"Harry!" Hermione ran at him at full speed and flung her arms around him.

"OW!"

"Sorry!" she squeaked as she jumped back "I'm just so glad you're safe."

"Me too Hermione. Me too."

"I just…when you did…after whatever you did to save me…I thought you…you…" Hermione's eyes watered, and she looked like she was about to start crying.

"Hermione. No crying. Or else I start calling you Hermie. Forever."

Her tears promptly dried up as she punched Harry in the arm. "Ow! That hurt!" he said as he rubbed the sore spot.

"You deserved it." she simply said.

They spent the next few minutes catching up on all that had happened since Harry had been unconscious.

Hedwig had flamed in halfway through their talk and Harry told her Dumbledore's version of how Hedwig had found him.

And Hermione, after oohing and aahing over the beautiful Phoenix, told him of how there had been this entire Daily Prophet fire about how the stone was about to be destroyed and the Flamels were going to die. The news of what had happened in the school had been pressed into a paragraph in the seventh page because of all that.

Harry didn't doubt that Malfoy had a hand in suppressing the news to protect the school and the board.

"Its all pretty sad…how they have to die," Hermione said.

At that moment, Madam Pomfrey bustled over.

"You've had nearly fifteen minutes, now OUT," she said firmly.

After a nap, Harry felt nearly back to normal.

"I want to go to the feast," he told Madam Pomfrey as she straightened his many candy boxes. "Can I please go?"

"Professor Dumbledore says you are to be allowed to go," she said stiffly, as though in her opinion Dumbledore didn't realize how risky feasts could be.

Later, Harry found a handsome, leather-covered book beside his bed. It said that it was from Hagrid. Harry opened it curiously. It was full of wizard photographs. Smiling and waving at him from every page were his mother and father.

 _Sent owls off to all your parents' old school friends, asking for photos . . . knew you didn't have any_ , the note said. Harry had choked up with tears.

Harry made his way down to the end-of-year feast alone that night. He had been held up by Madam Pomfrey's fussing about, insisting on giving him one last checkup, so the Great Hall was already full. It was decked out in the Slytherin colors of green and silver to celebrate Slytherin's winning the house cup for the seventh year in a row. A huge banner showing the Slytherin serpent covered the wall behind the High Table.

When Harry walked in there was a sudden hush, and then everybody started talking loudly at once. He slipped into a seat between Terry and Hermione and tried to ignore the fact that people were standing up to look at him.

Fortunately, Dumbledore arrived moments later. The babble died away.

"Another year gone!" Dumbledore said cheerfully, "And I must trouble you with an old man's wheezing waffle before we sink our teeth into our delicious feast. What a year it has been! Hopefully, your heads are all a little fuller than they were…you have the whole summer ahead to get them nice and empty before next year starts…"

"Now, as I understand it, the house cup here needs awarding, and the points stand thus: In fourth place, Gryffindor, with three hundred and twelve points; in third, Hufflepuff, with three hundred and fifty-two; Ravenclaw has four hundred and twenty-six and Slytherin, four hundred and seventy- two."

A storm of cheering and stamping broke out from the Slytherin table. Harry could see Draco banging his goblet on the table. He remembered the quest he had about winning the house cup. The thought of failing made his stomach churn a bit.

"Yes, Yes, well done, Slytherin," said Dumbledore. "However, recent events must be taken into account."

The room went very still. The Slytherins' smiles faded a little.

"Ahem," said Dumbledore. "I have a few last-minute points to dish out. Let me see. Yes... To Harry Potter for outstanding courage, a cunning mind, brilliant use of logic, true loyalty to his friends and much more . . . I award a woefully insufficient one hundred points."

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **You da MVP bruh! Win your house the house cup!**

 **Reward,**

 **Respect from the teachers**

 **Your housemates love you**

 **10% more chance of getting laid.**

 **50,000 Exp**

"Which means, Dumbledore called over the storm of applause, "that we need a little change of decoration." He clapped his hands. In an instant, the green hangings became blue and the silver became bronze; the huge Slytherin serpent vanished and a mighty Ravenclaw eagle took its place.

A maddening amount of noise erupted from the Ravenclaw table. Everyone stood up to yell and cheer as Harry had to use dozens of well-placed banishing charms to keep his housemates from crushing him. Even Hufflepuff and Gryffindor joined in, elated at breaking the streak of Slytherin wins.

Draco glared at Harry for a second before raising his goblet in congratulations. Harry raised his own goblet back in acknowledgment with a chuckle.

It was a good night.

* * *

Harry had almost forgotten that the exam results were still to come, but come they did. Harry of course, had one of the best grades of the first years, with Hermione being the only one barely beating him. Even Neville scraped through, his good Herbology mark making up for his abysmal Potions one.

And suddenly, their wardrobes were empty, their trunks were packed, Neville's toad was found lurking in a corner of the toilets. Notes were handed out to all students, warning them not to use magic over the holidays.

Hagrid was there to take them down to the fleet of boats that sailed across the lake and soon Harry, with all his friends and Hedwig, was boarding the Hogwarts Express.

They spent the time talking and laughing as the countryside became greener and tidier. Harry had just lost a game of exploding snap against Terry when suddenly a small owl fluttered through the open window and dropped a letter into Harry's hands before fluttering away.

Harry picked it up and read it.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _This is to inform you of the final selection of the family in the issue of your custody being transferred._

 _I will not lie, it has been quite dramatic. A surprise contender for your custody made themselves known a few days ago. Unknown to the Ministry, there has been a French branch of the Potter family since the early 1400s. And now that they have decided to move back to Britain, they're eligible for your custody. With the proof of familial relationship by our extremely reliable Office of Magical Heritage and them having enough resources to easily raise a child, they were the perfect candidates._

 _Having met them personally, I assure you Harry that Nick and Ellie Potter are good people and hopefully, will provide a great atmosphere for a growing boy like you. I apologize for the late news and hope to see you at the Ministry for that tour I promised this summer._

 _Hoping you are well._

 _Yours sincerely,_

 _Cornelius Fudge_

 _Minister of Magic_

Enclosed was a wizarding photo of a brown-haired middle-aged couple. The woman happily waved at him from the photo.

Who were these people? Why hadn't they come forward earlier? How was he going to live with people he didn't even know?

"Who is it from Harry?" Ron asked

"Just a note from my book supplier telling me he sold out." Harry said.

A smile spread on his face he watched as Hermione suggested her own favorite book supplier and Terry suggested his own. Ron chucked a chess board at the two in response and Dean started laughing his ass off.

'As long as I have friends like these,' he thought, "I'll manage."

They collectively gobbled up twelve packs of Bettie Bott's Every Flavor Beans as they sped past Muggle towns, and soon they were pulling off their robes and putting on jackets and coats as the train pulled into platform nine and three-quarters at King's Cross Station.

Harry's hand clenched the letter. His stomach was a bundle of nerves. He quickly said goodbye to his friends, who went off to find their parents in the crowded platform, before scanning the entire platform for the faces in the photo.

He froze as he caught sight of the couple waving at him. His mind entirely short-circuited as he read the floating words above the man's head.

 **Nicholas Flamel**

 **Lv-?**

* * *

 **Let me know what your thoughts are on this first book as a whole. Also, if you've read the old version of Book 2, feel free to suggest any changes or additions you have in mind.**


	19. Outtakes-I:Omake Files

Outtakes:

Omake #1: The Very Best

 _Scene: Harry sees his powers for the first time._

When Harry finally went into his cupboard, luckily the Dursleys were all asleep, leaving Harry to do the dishes with the threat of starvation hanging over his head in case he tried to steal something. Harry took some ice from the freezer and wrapped it in one of his oldest shirts and taking off his shoes and socks, crashed into the rickety bed that was his. The last sound he heard before he fell asleep was a 'ping!'

The next day Harry opened his eyes and slowly wiped away the dust in his eyes. He stretched around and yawned feeling great. No headache, no homework….that he remembered and no Dudley, jumping about in danger of reaching critical mass, turning into a black hole and killing everyone one on the planet.

Suddenly Harry heard a 'ping' and he shot upright, hitting his head on the low roof above.

"Ow!"

Gingerly rubbing his head, he looked up to see a blue box hovering over his head with letters in it. He rubbed his head and looked again, wondering whether this was actually happening or he was finally losing it.

Harry then read the text;

 **Hello there! Welcome to the world of pokémon! My name is Oak! People call me the pokémon Prof! This world is inhabited by creatures called pokémon! For some people, pokémon are pets. Others use them for fights. Myself...I study pokémon as a profession.**

 **NEXT**

Huh?

Harry hesitated for a second before curiously pressing next. A keyboard screen and the following text appeared.

 **First, what is your name?**

Harry typed in his name.

 **Right! So your name is HARRY!**

 **YES/NO**

Harry pressed yes.

 **HARRY! Your very own POKEMON legend is about to unfold! A world of dreams and adventures with POKEMON awaits! Let's go!**

 **NEXT**

Again, Harry pressed next.

 **Here, HARRY! There are 3 POKEMON here! When I was young, I was a serious POKEMON trainer. In my old age, I have only 3 left, but you can have one! Choose!**

Underneath the text, three boxes one each of red, green and blue with words in them appeared.

The red one said, Charmander.

The blue one said, Squirtle.

The green one said Bulbasaur.

Shrugging, Harry selected the red one.

 **So! You want the fire POKEMON, Charmander?**

 **YES/NO**

Harry pressed yes.

Suddenly, an orange lizard dinosaur thingy with a round head and a burning tail appeared with a red and white ball clutched in its paws.

Harry stared at it.

It stared back at Harry.

"Charmander" the flaming lizard dinosaur thingy clearly enunciated.

"EEEEEYYYYYAAAAIIIIKKKKEEEESSSS" Harry yelled as he scrambled to get away from it.

Startled, the Charmander panicked and let out a massive barrage of Ember pellets all around the tiny wooden cupboard.

The next morning when the neighbourhood woke up, entire Dursley household burned to ashes. None of the four residents survived. The charred remains of an unidentified creature was found from the remains and forever stored in the Natural History Museum in London as a mystery, becoming a massive tourist attraction.

* * *

Omake #2 Worthy

 _Scene: Harry meets Mahou the elder centaur._

"Harry James Potter" he spoke. His wizened voice seemed to somehow hold the tenor of a thousand ancient voices that echoed off the trees surrounding them. "You have been judged worthy."

"Worthy of what?" Harry asked.

The centaur spoke no more and turned around to pull something out of the leaf satchel that he was wearing.

Harry tried and failed to use observe on him

The centaur pulled out a transparent pouch. It was bulging with dried flower buds of some kind.

"This, Harry Potter, is the produce of the legendary herb of balance, able to heal even the most powerful of ailments." He held out the pouch towards Harry. "A gift from our people for protecting our forest's inhabitants."

Harry grabbed the pouch and used observe on it.

 **Marijuana**

 **Marijuana is a preparation of the Cannabis plant intended for use as a psychoactive drug.**

"That's weed." Harry said to the old centaur.

"No its not." the centaur seemed to suddenly lose a lot of his mystique.

"Yes it is. Why are you giving me weed?" Harry insisted.

"I have no idea what you are talking about. It's the forest's repaying you for your good deeds." The centaur said in a wise centaurish way.

"The forest wants me to get on weed…to repay me for saving a unicorn"

"…it's good for the heart?"

* * *

Omake #3: McGonagall on Trains

 _Scene: Harry and McGonagall sit down and talk at the Leaky Cauldron after a day of shopping._

"Why do wizards use trains, Professor McGonagall? Don't they have their own unique ways to travel? Like apparition? Why would they need trains to take us from one place to another?" Harry asked as they sat down at their table, still trying to wrap his head around all that he had just seen.

"Well, Mr. Potter . . . ."

Out of the corner of his eyes, Harry saw the Professor hesitate. In an unusual moment of perceptiveness, he could see her trying to rationalize to herself about lying to him. And he knew that if he didn't make her tell the truth then, she and any adults she came in association with would always think it right to lie to him in an attempt to protect him. And he knew what to say.

"Professor."

She turned to him with a questioning look in her eyes.

"I am an orphan. I have no family in magical world and my only family hates any mention of this 'unnatural freakishness'. I am alone. The Dursleys lied to me about everything. And suddenly one day, you come in and tell me that my parents lived and died protecting this world. If that is the truth, then I deserve to know what that my parents gave their lives protecting. Please don't take it away from me."

McGonagall looked conflicted for a second. Then, she sighed and spoke,

"We know from early historical accounts that Hogwarts students used to arrive at school in any manner that caught their fancy, right up until the imposition of the International Statute of Secrecy. At this point, it became a matter of urgency to find some more discreet method of transport." She said.

"Minister Gambol, the first Half Blood Minister for Magic saw the potential in trains. Where exactly the Hogwarts Express came from has never been conclusively proven. It underwent several magical modifications before the Ministry approved it for school use.

"Many pure-blood families were outraged at the idea of their children using Muggle transport, which they claimed was unsafe, insanitary and demeaning. Even today, they keep trying to remove the train, saying that a muggle artefact does not belong in our world." she finished with a sad look on her face. "This is a part of a much deeper problem."

A deep sigh.

"You must understand Mr. Potter that no place in this world is immune to prejudice. Those who have wizarding ancestry at first claimed superiority over muggleborns since they were ignorant of our culture. Instead of teaching them about said culture, this prejudice devolved into a battle of blood, splitting all wizards and witches into purebloods, halfbloods and muggleborns. The purebloods…many of them scorn those of lesser blood and do all in their power to harm them. That…is our world's greatest flaw. That is what Lily and James died fighting."

In a few moments, the entire idea of a magical utopia he built in his head crumbled into dust. His state of mind must have shown on his face for Professor McGonagall spoke again with a sorrowful tone.

"Do you realise now why I wished to keep it from you? But you were right Mr. Potter. You will need to know all you can before you enter our world." They sat in silence for a few minutes.

"Its getting late . . . my relatives wanted me back before sunset."

As they were getting up to leave,

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Achieve true equality between all magicals**

 **Reward,**

 **Esoteric magic**

 **Respect in Magical World**

 **?**

 **?**

 **1,00,000 Exp**

 **Failure,**

 **Universal Scorn**

 **Eventual death of magic**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry didn't hesitate for a second before pressing yes.

* * *

Omake #4: Hedwig loves Harry

 _Scene: The talk between Harry and Hedwig at the third floor corridor._

Harry let out Hedwig from his pocket before grabbing on to her tail feathers. Together they flashed to the third floor corridor.

Hedwig flapped her wings and alighted on Harry's shoulders.

"You aren't coming Hedwig." Harry said.

Hedwig chirped indignantly.

"No." Harry said, his tone final. Hedwig fell quiet. "I can't risk you getting hurt by Quirrell. You're my best friend. Please Hedwig. No."

With a mournful trill, Hedwig nipped his fingers, giving in.

"Listen carefully" Harry instructed, "Stay in the forest. If you need anything, the centaurs will help you. Eat healthy. Don't just keep on gobbling apples. I'll call for you as soon as I'm out. Got it?"

She gave a shaky nod with her tiny head.

Harry hesitated a bit before saying his next words. "And Hedwig…if…if something were to happen to me, you'd feel it right? You'd know it?"

A hesitant nod.

"If you feel that I'm…gone," Hedwig chirped angrily, incensed at him for saying something like that. Harry raised a hand before continuing with some difficulty. "Just…just find your mum will you? Find her and let her help you…And just stay safe. Will you do that for me girl?"

Letting out a sorrowful trill of agreement, she placed her head Harry's cheek, closing her eyes in intense concentration. Two disjointed words, faint in volume, as if they were being said from the end of a long tunnel, echoed in Harry's head.

 _Love . . .you . . ._

As Harry stood there shell shocked at finally hearing her talk, Hedwig nipped at Harry's ear a final time before rising into the air and flaming away.

A few silent seconds passed. "Love you too girl." Harry finally said to the empty corridor, and opened the door that led to Fluffy's chamber.

* * *

Omake #5: Meta Harry

 _Scene: In the Hospital Wing, when Dumbledore and Harry talk with each other._

Harry got something caught in his throat and he started coughing loudly.

Dumbledore picked up an apple from the bedside table and nodded towards Fawkes, who flew over onto his shoulders. He bent his head over to the apple and shed a single tear onto it.

Harry watched in awe as a ripple of spread across the apple's surface and in a second, the red apple had gained a golden sheen.

Noticing Harry's look of wonder, Dumbledore smiled and handed the apple to Harry before answering his questioning look.

"Phoenix tears have incredible healing ability Harry. When combined with apples, it can easily be classified as some of the most nutritious edibles in the whole world. There's even a myth about how these apples could grant immortality to its eater in the Greek wizarding legends."

"Like the Hera's Golden Apples of Immortality" Harry noted,

"Indeed!" Dumbledore seemed delighted that Harry had noticed the parallel. "You know of the legend! Not many people have ever even heard about it. How did you ever come across that story?"

"I don't know. Probably because Concept started this story based on another story that is based on Greek mythology." Harry said, not thinking about it too much.

A pair of rocks came flying down and bonked both of them right on their heads, erasing the last line of the conversation from both of their minds.

Rubbing their heads, they looked at the pristine ceiling.

"I wonder where the rocks came from." Harry muttered, before turning back to Albus Dumbledore. "Well, to answer your question sir, I probably read about it in some sort of Greek Mythology book in the muggle library at Surrey."

"Ah yes., Dumbledore smiled and said,"Muggle literature is truly unmatched by its wizarding counterpart. Now come on Harry, eat up."

* * *

HARRY'S CURRENT STATS

Harry Potter

Health-1675/1675

Mana-1425/1425

The Gamer

Title-The Boy who Lived

Level-12 Exp-237773/265000

Race-Wizard

STR-14

VIT-20(+4)=24

DEX-19(+4)=23

INT-34

WIS-37

LUC-24

POINTS-10

MONEY- 2025£ / 2097G 188S 56K

Harry Potter is a wizard, the son of Lily Potter and James Potter. He is a new fledgling student at Hogwarts. He likes hanging with his friends and divides his time between figuring out insanely complicated political manipulations and honing his unusual magical skills as the Gamer in secret. Harry loves his parents, and wants to help the world they died protecting.

Status- wizard, giving Harry +4 VIT, +4 DEX and the ability to control magic, talk to snakes, control his appearance and look cool.

* * *

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

 **Story Questions**

 **Q1 - Will all the books continue in this single story?**

A - Yes! All the books will be in this single story, Harry Potter & the Game.

 **Q2 - When will you start posting the next Book?**

A - ASAP

 **Q3 - How many books have you planned?**

A - Currently five, although I may do more. I may even do less if everything looks like it can be wrapped up nicely. Who knows?

 **Q4 - What will be your update schedule from now on?**

A - Once or twice a week.

 **Gamer Questions**

 **Q1 - Is Gamer's Mind impenetrable?**

A - As shown in the case of the Mirror accessing Harry's mind to read his desires, Gamer's Mind is far from impenetrable. Its powerful and old magic, but not invincible. Any mind magic _either_ more powerful _or_ more ancient than it can penetrate it.

 **Q2 - Shouldn't Gamer's Mind stop Harry from going insane like it showed in the mirror?**

A - He doesn't go insane in the image. That's the beauty of it. The frightening thought that the greatest _logical_ desire a Harry Potter with Gamer's Mind has, is to be at the top as the very best, no matter what the cost.

 **Plot Questions**

 **Q1 - Is Harry's head Horcrux dead?**

A - No. In my story, I have rigidly separated the idea of soul and magic. So the stone's magic didn't affect the Horcrux. For those who are thinking that the Stone's magic should have removed the horcrux, I say this. It took a _Killing_ curse to remove it in canon. Why would the stone's _Healing_ magic remove it?

 **Q2 - Why did the stone go to Harry and not Hermione as the purest magical core? Shouldn't the Horcrux taint him?**

A – I do have an in-universe explanation for this. Horcrux is a piece of soul. It affects the mind (hence the language ability of Parseltongue). Magical core remains unaffected. For those thinking that Harry should have dark magic since other horcruxes are created using dark magic and are considered dark objects, Horcruxes are dark magic items because they're _objects_ modified to hold a soul _using_ dark magic. A human body on the other hand (according to this overly complicated pseudoscience we're discussing) is biologically _built_ to hold a soul.

Thus, no ritual or preparation was required to make baby Harry a horcrux. And thus, Harry was the purest core in the room.

 **Q3 - Why can't Hedwig just flame anywhere and everywhere?**

A - I've tweaked the canon a bit. In HP&G Phoenixes can only go to places they've seen before. Fawkes has had centuries see explore places all over the world, so he can go pretty much anywhere. Hedwig has not, thus she can't.

 **Random Reviewer Questions**

 **Q1 - Chapter15 - I doubt that Lisa Turpin would be nearly as foolish about the Diary as Ginny might be in regards to what it is. More so since she would be smart enough to know once she goes over the books she has, that one was added or that it was not one she had before she ran into Malfoy.**

A - Thanks for reviewing. Ravenclaws have a _Thirst for Knowledge_. They aren't smart by default. Also, the Diary isn't powerless, as I showed in the chapter 'A Tale of Two Toms'.

 **Q2 - Chapter17 - The whole "force of a thousand bows" thing would almost certainly be magic, wouldn't it? Wouldn't magically generated momentum of the arrows be nullified by Quirrell's body wards, just as Snape's spells to halt the troll's fist's momentum were?**

A – Very good point. Again, it involves a rather stupidly complex storyline I have planned for the Gandiva bow and its origins, but for now, let me just put forth a simple explanation. If Thor slams a car with Mjolnir and the car goes flying, the car isn't infused with Mjolnir's magic. Its just following Newton's 3rd law of motion. Same is the case with the arrows.

PM ME IF YOU HAVE ANY OTHER QUESTIONS

* * *

 **Let me know which Omake was your favorite!**


	20. Prologue-II:Quod Est Velox

**Hey! You made it to Book 2!**

 **So much love to you for continuing to read so far! I hope you enjoy Book 2 too. It has some great divergences from canon and takes the story in a hell of a new direction with a great villain arc. You're in for one hell of a ride.**

* * *

 **Book Two: Glitching Souls**

* * *

Prologue:

Harry looked around the quaint little magical tea shop they were sitting in. It looked very homey, with its burning fireplace and its earth brown colors. The patrons seemed to be of the elderly kind, each minding their own business. A wooden sign hung outside, visible only to wizards and witches, with ' _Rosa Lee's Teabag_ ' written on it.

After getting over his shock and going over to the couple in the station, they had introduced themselves to Harry as Nick and Ellie Potter. They'd shrunk his luggage and then promptly flooed over to this tea shop to have some food and talk about the guardianship issues. For the moment at least, Harry had decided to go along with their charade.

He needed to find out why they were lying to him and what their intentions were in getting his guardianship.

His thoughts came back to the present and he looked back towards the couple sipping their tea in front of him. His eyes fell onto the Daily Prophet on the table, which loudly proclaimed the death of Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel this morning.

He idly wondered how funny it all was for them.

Maybe he could make it slightly less so.

"Its a shame how the Flamels passed away," Harry said.

Looking a bit thrown off at the odd comment, Nick looked down at the paper before answering, "Yes. I do suppose it is. They did contribute quite a bit to the magical world. Truly legendary names."

Harry nodded and schooled his expression into childlike intrigue. "Hey! Funny coincidence isn't it? Your names are pretty similar to them. I mean if I had to guess nicknames for the Flamels, I'd probably come up with something like your names. Odd huh?" Harry flippantly commented and sipped on his tea, using Gamer's Mind to avoid showing his smirk.

They frowned a bit, looking at each other, almost as if they were having a whole conversation through their eyes. Harry had no doubt that they were. Being as old as they were, they had to be very proficient in mind arts, and talking to each other without words must be child's play for them.

"Yes, I do suppose that's quite a coincidence." Nick finally said after a few quiet seconds.

Harry smiled as he sipped his tea. It was so much fun to mess with people hiding their identities. First Vance and then Flamels. It had been a while since he'd used his abilities to prank someone, and it was fun.

"So Harry," Ellie finally asked after a small while, "I'm sure you have a lot of questions. We'd be glad to answer any we think we can."

Deciding to go along with it, he asked, "Well…I don't really know anything about you. And I've never even heard about any French branch of the Potter family."

"I'm not surprised you haven't." Nick said "Our lot have mostly been farmers and potion ingredient suppliers since the 1400s. Ever since then our entire clan lived a very isolated life. We were considering moving back to England when we heard about you being up for adoption, so we sold most of our land there and moved to London."

"So are there others? In the family?" Harry asked.

"No." Ellie's face seemed to wilt, "Just us. Everyone else has passed away."

Harry grew somber, catching the hidden meaning in the sentence. He stayed silent for a second before changing the subject.

"So what do you do in London? For a living" Harry asked.

"Nothing much really. Ellie wants to write a book and we've got more than enough quid from the land sales, so rest assured we won't be facing money issues anytime soon. I'll just be stuck in the apartment doing house stuff and helping you with schoolwork eh?" Nicholas said with a smile.

Harry smiled a bit before asking something that he felt a bit curious about, "Apartment?"

"Oh yes!" Nick perked up. "Your Headmaster mentioned that you didn't know a lot about the wizarding world outside the school and Alley. I reckon I should get to be the one to tell you about all this stuff. We'll be living in a wizarding apartm-"

"It's getting late now Nick." Ellie interrupted, looking at the clock on the wall.

"Ah yes, yes. I'll tell you along the way Harry," Nick said. They quickly paid for their food and headed towards the floo, towards their new home.

* * *

They emerged from the floo in a small room. A man in green robes; looking more like a valet than anything else; gave Nick a tip of his hat as they opened the door and walked out into what looked like the corridor of an apartment building floor. Harry looked at the numbers of the apartments as he passed them on their way to _206B_ , which was their home.

Nick explained that since most wizards didn't have ancestral homes or manors, they lived in apartments that were built into the thirteenth floors of many muggle buildings by wizarding contractors. Since the number 13 was a magically powerful number, the concealment spells _always_ took very well, making muggles simply think that those buildings didn't build thirteenth floors.

The building owners usually came down with a severe case of triskaidekaphobia, the fear of number thirteen, and forgot they ever built a thirteenth floor in their buildings.

"Wizarding contractors are obligated by the ministry to pay the owner of the building of course," Nick assured Harry, assuaging his concerns of the muggles getting the short end of the straw.

Then, much to his joy, Harry came to know from Ellie that this apartment in which they lived in was only a few minutes away from Charing Cross and the Diagon Alley.

"A lot of the shopkeepers from Diagon live here in our building," Nick said as he pressed his wand to the lock of Number 206B, "since it's pretty close from here. For example, Florean Fortescue, the owner of the ice cream parlor in Diagon. He lives in 208B. We're neighbors to the best ice cream maker in the country. How amazing is that!"

Harry gave him that. It _was_ pretty amazing. However, it only took one glance at the inside of the apartment before Harry convinced himself that Undetectable Expansion charms were undoubtedly just as amazing. If not more so.

The apartment was massive on the inside. It was actually a full-fledged house with two floors.

Nick and Ellie encouraged Harry to let Hedwig out from wherever he kept her. When he opened his pocket and the beautiful white phoenix flew out with a trill, Ellie's face lit up.

The next few minutes were spent with Harry explaining to Nick how he'd created the pocket for Hedwig using modified spells and Ellie cooing over Hedwig, who seemed to be loving the attention.

"That is actually a brilliant idea! You built it when you were bored in the Hospital wing?" Nick asked, examining his pocket's see-through properties.

"Yeah" Harry said.

 **Lie Successful!**

"You should definitely get into enchanting. This is a pretty solid job you did!" Nick complimented.

After a half hour of random chit chat about how Harry's school year had been and if he'd recovered from what had happened with the DADA teacher, Nick flopped onto the couch in the living room with a book and Ellie began showing Harry around the apartment, all across the two floors, going through the rules about responsible magic casting, since the Ministry couldn't detect magic being cast in wizarding areas.

"And this…is your room." Ellie said as she opened the final door upstairs, with the air of an artist taking pride in her work.

And the pride was not undeserved. The medium sized room, much larger than anything Privet Drive had, was painted in a Ravenclaw blue, with the occasional flick of bronze in the paint. A set of a study table and a chair made of fine mahogany was sitting along a wall and a shelf half full of books stood across another. A wardrobe stood to the side. The bed was a single bed and looked so comfortable that Harry wanted to fall asleep on it as soon as possible. And above the bed hung a still painting of a Ravenclaw Eagle.

Hedwig flapped her wings, flying into the room and perching herself on the gilded bird stand that stood in the corner of the room.

It looked as if the room was tailor-made for Harry. And it was.

"So? Do you like it" Ellie asked, grinning at Harry.

"Like it?" Harry exclaimed, his moderate distrust of the couple forgotten in the moment, "It's perfect!"

"Good" Ellie said, ruffling Harry's hair. "Now put your stuff away and get yourself and Hedwig downstairs for dinner."

After she left, Harry put away his books on the shelf and put all his clothes into the wardrobe. His mind was exploding with questions that he didn't have the means to answer right now.

"What do you reckon Hedwig? They don't seem too bad do they?"

A happy chirp was his reply.

"I think so too…but why would Nicholas and Perenelle Flamel of all people want my guardianship? Did Dumbledore put them up to it?"

"Harry! Food is ready!" came the voice of Ellie from the kitchen as he finally finished arranging his books on the bookshelf. Putting away his thoughts for later and deciding to focus on his empty stomach for now, Harry opened the door and ran downstairs, Hedwig gliding out behind him.

* * *

Harry fell into his bed that night a bit worried. It was the first time this day that he'd gotten a chance to contemplate his situation.

If the Flamels somehow had become his guardians; presumably with Dumbledore's blessings; then they were creating new identities. Identities that'd be solidified by them gaining custody of the single most famous and loved child in the entire country.

'But why?' he wondered 'Why would they need to take a new identity and get my custody if they don't have the Stone and are about to die?'

'Unless,' Harry's Gamer's mind helped him deduce, 'they _do_ have the Stone. And they did the media hoax and this identity change to protect it. Dumbledore said that Voldemort is still out there, which means he'd try to come after the Stone. If he thought it destroyed and its maker dead, he'd leave the Stone alone.'

That made an obscene amount of sense.

But not everything that made sense was the truth. He needed to get the Flamels to spill.

But how?

He had no physical evidence to force them to tell the truth. If he called them out on their names, they'd simply claim coincidence. And Harry certainly wasn't going to reveal his game abilities to them.

The only way to force them to tell the truth...was to find the stone.

Harry hesitated, pausing that line of thought.

What if he found the Stone and then they just obliviated him? Would Gamer's Mind stop that? _Could_ Gamer's Mind stop that?

It had held off the Obliviate from the Auror way back when he had stumbled upon Emmeline Vance and her team of Aurors near his school, but that could just have been the Auror screwing up…

That was something that needed to be answered. He _needed_ to be sure.

And so, Harry quickly thought up of a small experiment. Pulling out a small piece of paper and a pen from his inventory, he wrote a small note to himself.

' _Experiment failed - GM susceptible to Memory modifications.'_

He scribbled a small doodle only he knew on the corner, as a proof of authenticity, and placed the note on his bedside table. If the obliviate worked, then he'd find the note and try to find some other way to get the Flamels to spill.

Placing his wandtip to his forehead and using Gamer's Mind to focus carefully on the last one minute, he squeezed his eyes shut and cast the spell. " _Obliviate_ "

Harry's memories remained intact. A window popped up.

 **Memory spell attack averted**

So Obliviate didn't work on him. Harry felt a lot better about his entire situation now.

The clock on the wall struck twelve, and gave a little chime.

Suddenly, a massive glowing green screen, as high and wide as the walls of the room, appeared in front of him, with massive words written on it making Harry topple back onto his bed in shock.

Ping!

 **Congratulations!**

 **You have successfully lived through you your first year at Hoggy Warty Hogwarts! As a reward, take this!**

 **Unlockable Feature #1 unlocked!**

 **Location Bonuses**

 **These are bonuses and boosts to certain stats, skills, perks or any other abilities that are given by being present in certain locations. These bonuses are temporary and will be removed after you leave the location. The Location bonus screen can be accessed via the command 'location bonus'**

Harry stared at that for a second before smiling and waving it away. "Location Bonus" he said clearly and a window popped up.

 **Location Bonus: Apartment 206B**

 **+50% HP regen**

 **x2 learning speed for Healing related skills and Alchemical magic.**

 **x3 learning speed for Non-conventional magic.**

Yep. He was in the Flamel's apartment alright. The learning boosts would be great if he could get them to share their secret identity.

And to do that he'd have to find the stone.

Harry frowned, wondering where the stone could possibly be. Gringotts and Hogwarts were out, for obvious reasons. And Harry wasn't aware enough about the common wizarding world to know if there were safer places than Hogwarts. For all he knew, they could have chucked it into the Atlantic ocean.

He sighed. He needed to think in peace, and he knew just the place to do it.

Taking a deep breath, Harry said, "ID Create." he intoned. To his surprise and shock, a familiar window popped up.

 **You cannot enter or exit the ID when in extreme proximity to a supercharged magical nexus. Error Code : PS**

"Error code PS…Philosopher's Stone." Harry whispered, "No. There is absolutely no way they'd keep it in such an unprotected place as this apartment."

But why wouldn't they, Harry's mind contested, when to everyone else, the stone is no more. Why would they even be worried? They'd simply hide it with a few concealment charms. The only person they'd have to hide it from was a twelve-year-old boy.

'Of course,' Harry thought, 'They'd never have thought that a twelve-year-old would have access to powers that could sense the very magic that their stone emitted.'

But how would he find it. It was sure to be under several powerful concealment charms.

Harry flopped onto his bed and started scrolling through his skills looking for something useful.

Suddenly, he stilled.

No. No way. No way could it be that simple.

Harry, with some trepidation, gave the command, "Mage Sight…activate."

His vision flashed white for a second before the color flared in. The glowing golden brown of the apartment's bricks, although not as bright as Hogwarts, was there, letting Harry know that this was a magical apartment. Harry peered at the wall for a second, looking to see if he could see through the walls using this skill.

No such luck. It looked like mage sight, much like real sight, was obstructed by physical objects.

No worries. If this worked as Harry thought it did, then Harry would easily be able to find out where the stone was.

He got up from his bed and moved towards the door, intent on opening it and searching the outside. Suddenly, he stopped as he realized that there was a golden sheen around the door.

Some sort of alarm ward, Harry realized, to tell the caster when it was broken.

Lighting his finger on fire for a second to empty out his MP a bit, Harry pulled up his required skill.

 **Runic Burnout Lv-5 (99%)**

 **A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.**

 **Do you wish to use it on : Common Alarm Ward?**

 **YES/NO**

99%. Huh. So that's why his runic burnout hadn't leveled up. Breaking this ward would probably do it and give him a level up. Harry grabbed onto the ward's mana and pressed yes on the runic burnout.

With a small muffled flash, the ward disappeared.

Ping!

 **A skill has leveled up!**

 **Runic Burnout Lv-6 (3%)**

 **A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.**

There it was.

Harry waved it away and took out his wand and cast an _Alohamora_ at the door, which opened with a click. Holding his breath for a second to hear if anybody was coming, Harry slowly opened the door and stepped out, wincing when it creaked a bit as it closed.

It was undoubtedly dark in the apartment as he walked down the stairs, looking through every room that he could open, to the living room. But to mage sight, darkness was no obstruction.

He first saw it in the living room through the corner of his eyes.

A bright purple glowing ward that somehow he couldn't look at straight without having to automatically look away. He pulled Gamer's Mind to full power, and only then was he able to look straight at it.

The ward was centered around a small drawer table, with a small plain rock on the top that Harry could bet was the wardstone.

Harry started forward raising his hand, intending to just Runic Burnout the ward, but he hesitated.

The last time he'd tried to use it on a really powerful ward, he'd ended up almost dead.

Did he really want to risk it?

No, he decided, and let his hand drop. His mind, working as fast as it was under the full influence of the Gamer's Mind, quickly thought up a new idea. Activating Unicorn Boost, he ran to his room and stopped right in front of Hedwig.

With his face centimeters in front of the phoenix's beak, he said, "Wake up Hedwig"

The bird woke up a startled squawk and toppled straight off the perch. Flapping her wings and righting herself mid-air, she angrily flapped onto Harry's shoulder and dug her claws in.

Harry winced and stammered out an apology before Boosting both of them to the living room.

"Hedwig, see that stone?" Hedwig nodded. "Could you get through the wards to it?"

Hedwig flapped up into the air. Harry watched as she glanced the ward with her wings before gliding back and alighting on his shoulder again and nodding her confirmation.

He pulled out his handkerchief and stuffed it into Hedwig's claws. "Just be careful not touch it. Put the kerchief on it and then grab it before flaming out."

With a chirp of confirmation, Hedwig flamed in right above the stone, dropped the kerchief on it before grabbing it and bursting into a flame and reappearing near Harry.

She dropped the kerchief wrapped wardstone into Harry's hand and with a chirp of goodbye, flew straight back towards the room to go back to sleep.

Wards always needed to have their wardstone inside them to stay functioning. Harry watched with a grin as the purple ward dulled and dimmed before slowly fading out of existence. He walked towards the drawer table and pulled out the first drawer of the two, his hands shaking with anticipation.

He stared at its contents before promptly slamming it shut. He didn't need porn mags now. He was after the stone. Yes. The stone.

The next drawer was locked. Harry cast the most powerful Alohamora he could. It clicked open and slid out, filling Harry's vision with light. It was so bright that he had to turn off his mage sight.

And there it was, sitting inside a small glass box. Harry had never seen it before, but it was undoubtedly the Philosopher's Stone. There was no mistaking it. His own magic was singing at the sight of it. Mesmerized by the glowing red colour of the stone, Harry's hand moved of its own accord and picked it up.

A blaring sound ripped through the apartment. He realized with a curse that in his hurry to get through the magical defences, he hadn't even considered a muggle pressure alarm. His picking up the stone must have triggered it.

The sound of running feet reached Harry's ears and he turned around, stone in hand.

The alarm ward had brought both the Flamels, in their nightwear, with their wands out. Their expressions were frozen in shock at seeing who it was that had tripped the alarm.

Harry took a second to revel in the victory at outwitting two centuries old magicians. He knew what he wanted to say.

"You're teaching me alchemy," They opened their mouth to say something. "And I swear if you start spouting some bullshit about immortality and ancient laws I will _shank_ you."

* * *

 **I bet that chapter came quicker than you anticipated. There were a few changes here and there, but nothing too drastic. More is coming too. I hope you enjoyed this, please leave a review telling me your thoughts as it is greatly appreciated and will help on my writing.**

 **REVIEW!**


	21. Book-II:All That Glitters

Chapter 1:

Harry was grounded to his room for three days after the entire debacle.

To be fair, he had admitted to himself in those long hours of finishing up Potions and Charms homework, threatening the two most experienced and aged magicals he knew wasn't the best decision he'd ever made.

After those three days, when he finally became free again on July the first, the stone had been hidden away, this time beyond anywhere he could detect, and much to Harry's surprise, Perenelle seemed to be much happier with the entire situation. As it turned out, she wasn't entirely too big on lying twenty four seven to someone who was actually family.

Another interesting turn of events was the time he found out that he actually _was_ related to the Flamels, although in an entirely too convoluted way to matter too much. Perenelle had drawn a full family tree for him, but Harry couldn't possibly muster up the courage to fully read it, so he thanked her and chucked the paper into one of his study table drawers.

That day at lunch, he'd explained how he had broken the ward with Hedwig's help. Poor Nicholas got reamed into by Perenelle for being careless enough to not even put the wardstone inside the drawer table.

"How was I to know he had mage sight?" Nicholas had feebly argued back. And then got another new hole teared in him.

After lunch, Perenelle had shown a lot of secret rooms around the apartment that Harry hadn't seen before. There was a library, which was accessed by a password, and a full-fledged dueling room, just for magic and experiments because Perenelle didn't want to clean up after Nicholas all the time. And then there was a potions lab as well.

And after sumptuous dinner, where the atmosphere, at least for Harry, had become a lot better without all the lies, he went up to his bedroom.

He was about to put some last touches on his Transfiguration homework, when suddenly the door opened, and Nicholas stepped inside.

"Can I help you Nicholas?" Harry asked, using the first name he'd gotten permission to use earlier.

"Yes, actually. When you pulled out the stone, did you perchance see…a few books…in the upper drawer? I seem to have misplaced them and can't find them now."

There was a moment's silence before Harry suddenly asked, "Nicholas, is there any way you could teach me some alchemy this summer?"

Thrown off by the entirely different topic, Nicholas nonetheless answered the question. "Harry, I couldn't possibly teach you when you're this young."

"You took in Albus Dumbledore when he was seventeen."

"Albus Dumbledore had and still has one of the highest recorded levels of magical talent and intellectual quotients ever recorded. I have no doubt that you are quite smart, but you are not _that_ smart. Definitely not at twelve. I'll be glad to teach you when you're older, maybe in your twenties, after you finish your education. I won't teach you this summer."

"Oh no. You'll teach me alright. And you'll do it this summer," Harry said with a smile.

Nicholas raised a brow. "And why would I do that?"

"Did you know that I was a collector Nicholas?" Harry asked nonchalantly, "Back with the Dursleys, I used to collect little toy soldiers. Ones Dudley would throw away, ones I'd find at school, and even some in the trash…I collected them all. And one day, Uncle Vernon got ticked off because the toast was too burnt and just tossed them into the fireplace. And just like that, all my hard work collecting them over so many years just turned to ashes…"

Nicholas frowned. "What are you getting at, Harry?"

Harry didn't answer. Instead, he pulled open a drawer in his study table and pulled out a stack of magazines and his wand onto the table. He picked up the wand, lighting its tip on fire and looked pointedly towards Nicholas.

Recognizing the stack of magazines with wide eyes, Nicholas quickly pulled out his own wand and snapped a muffling spell at the door.

"Harry," he said warily, "Those are all vintage…exotic magazines from well over centuries ago. None of those are in print anymore. They're worth a fortune and entirely irreplaceable. I'd really appreciate it if you'd get that burning wand away from them."

Harry knew that. His observes on them had given him a pretty good idea of how much they were worth. "Oh I know. I knew that as soon as I found them protected in the drawer above the Stone. So here's my deal. Promise to teach me alchemy, and Auntie Perry out there never finds out about these _pornographic_ magazinesand these don't turn into ashes. You get them back safe and sound."

"Harry, there is an entire step by step process for getting an apprenticeship with me. _Blackmailing_ me is _not_ one of those steps. Put the wand down and we'll talk. Maybe after your seventh year, I'll teach you."

Harry wasn't having any of that. "You can consider this as me optimizing the process. And besides, you're dead to the world, aren't you? It's not as if there's a bunch of wannabes lining up to be your apprentice."

Nicholas seemed to change tactics. "Harry. If you're using the magazines to blackmail your way to what you want, how are you any different from Voldemort?"

"Ouch" Harry replied flatly, inching the burning tip of his wand ever closer to the stack of magazines, singeing the edge of one, "Dick move granddad. _Real_ dick move."

"I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this" Nicholas said with a sigh. Quick as a striking viper, his wand snapped out and he incanted, " _Obliviate_ "

 **Memory spell attack averted**

"Nice try oldie," Harry said with a smirk, "I didn't think you'd resort to that."

Nicholas stared at Harry in shock as he realized that the spell wasn't taking hold. It was a while before he spoke. "Desperate times, desperate measures, kid. Your shields…" Nicholas said looking intrigued "Albus mentioned them, but I didn't know they were…they're something else…"

"Yeah well, I need to have some surprises for anyone who comes knocking," Harry said, tapping the side of his head. "Now, do you agree to teach me alchemy?" he asked, bringing the burning wand closer to the stack.

He frowned at Harry before waving his hand at the magazines.

Harry quickly stuffed his wand into his pocket and grabbed onto the stack, preventing the summoning spell and grinned at Nicholas in victoriously.

Nicholas grinned back and waved his hand. Much to Harry's shock, his wand flew right out of his pocket and into the hand of the hexacentenarian. He had summoned Harry's wand!

"Just hand them over Harry," Nicholas said.

Harry hesitated for a second as he considered whether he could possibly reveal one of his abilities, at least to a small extent, to the Flamels. Was learning alchemy worth it? It looked like it was, but there could always be unforeseen repercussions.

'Fuck it,' he thought, and deciding to just do it, Harry lit his finger on fire and brought it threateningly close to the stack of magazines.

"WAIT!" Nicholas snapped, his eyes widening in shock, before rattling off half a dozen questions in wonder, "How are you doing that? Wandless magic at twelve?! Or is it just controlled accidental magic? Is that little flame all you can do? Or can you control fire to higher degrees?"

"Ah ah ah! You're asking too many wrong questions. You're not the only one with tricks _Nick._ I've got some as well. Now, try anything fishy again, and porno-central here goes up in flames," Harry threatened, his burning finger inching closer to the stack.

Nicholas sat there with a gaping mouth for a second before he pulled himself together. He glared at Harry for a second before getting up from where he sat and walking out of the room, closing the door behind him.

Harry stared at the door, wondering for a second about whether he had actually just gone too far. He had just blackmailed a six-hundred-year-old legendary wizard who, coincidentally, also had his custody. If he had really pissed Nicholas off, then he was done for. Wondering whether he should go after him and apologize or not, Harry sat there twiddling his thumbs.

Fortunately for him, Nicholas returned back to the room a minute with a stack of what looked like half a dozen books and slammed them onto Harry's study table.

He read the title on the cover of the first of the stack of books.

 _The Sceptical Chymist_ by _Robert Boyle_

"Finish reading these books as soon as possible. I'll test you on them and then we'll see about teaching you alchemy" Nicholas said grumpily and slammed the door shut behind him as he left. A screen popped up.

Ping!

 **A new skill has been created by you being a prick to an old man!**

 **Blackmailing Lv- 1 (40%)**

 **This is your ability to make another person do something you want by expressly using some sort of leverage against them. The higher the level, the more chance of success!**

 **(10 + Lv of Bullshitting)% chance of success, less based on how extreme the demand is.**

* * *

Nicholas expected Harry to take half a month to go through the books completely and thoroughly.

It took Harry five sleepless nights.

With a giant sigh of relief, Harry slammed the cover of _Principles of Alchemy and Atoms_ by _Nicholas Flamel_ shut and stretched his legs.

Ping!

 **New skill created and leveled by intensive studying!**

 **Science!, Lv-2**

 **A branch of knowledge that deals with the workings of the world.**

 **Physics- Basic concepts of physical science. +5% learning speed in astronomy and arithmancy.**

 **Chemistry- Basic concepts of chemical science. +5% learning speed in transfiguration and charms.**

 **Botany-Basic concepts of science dealing with flora. +5% learning speed in herbology and potions.**

 **Zoology- Basic concepts of science dealing with fauna. +5% learning speed in healing and magizoology.**

Harry thought about the benefits this could represent. He could potentially double his learning speed if he focused on grinding this skill. Happily waving away the screen, he stood up and walked around a bit, loosening up his leg muscles again before Nicholas came back once again.

His mentor had the annoying habit of rushing into his room at random times to quiz him on every book he finished, which was admittedly extremely easy for him due to both his Gamer's Mind and his own genuine wish to quickly start learning alchemy.

The door opened, and the man in question stepped in. He took a look at Harry's desk and his closed book and gestured at Harry to follow him. Harry walked out of his room behind him.

"No quiz today?" he asked as they headed towards the dueling room.

"No. Today we start with the basics of alchemy," Nicholas simply said, opening the door and stepping into the vast chamber, at one corner of which, a blackboard, a chair and a table had been set up. The other corner was lined with what looked like most of the potions lab's equipment.

Nicholas and Harry made their way to the blackboard where Nicholas gestured for him to sit and somberly said, "Are you sure Harry that you really want to do this? Alchemy is the single most dangerous piece of magic there is."

"That's what every teacher I've met says about their own subject." Harry pointed out.

"Fair enough" Nicholas conceded, "I do suppose teachers have a bias for their own crafts. Although, do try not to take this lightly. I have taught fifty students, of which only five have survived to become masters in alchemy. Now, did you read through my book?" Harry nodded. "Any questions?"

"Yes actually," Harry said, "The book repeatedly mentioned Transmutation. Are there any real differences between Transfiguration and that?"

"There are. But first, tell me, how many times Minerva has made you memorize that Transfiguration is not permanent." Nicholas asked with a small smirk.

"Too many," Harry replied with a sigh.

"Well, I'm glad. Because that will be important here. Note down what I say." Nicholas said, making Harry pull out his notebook and pen from his pocket and get ready.

"Transfiguration is not permanent. Transmutation is." Nicholas started dictating "Transfiguration is complex. Transmutation is simple and element to element."

"But why?" Harry asked, writing it down.

"Transfiguration is usually just magic forcing a set of complex compounds to be converted into other compounds. That usually violates the Law of Conservation of Mass, making the object inherently unstable. So while a Transfiguration can last quite a while when done properly, eventually it'll succumb and spontaneously convert back to whatever it was before. To prevent that people usually use runes, special incantations and other powering charms and such."

"And Transmutation?" Harry asked, jotting down all Nicholas said as fast as he could.

"Transmutation works on the principles of the atom. It can't do complex transformations. But what it can do is convert metal to metal by substituting neutrons, electrons and protons in them to make stable, permanent changes. Watch."

Harry put down his pen and watched as Nicholas pulled out a small nugget of gold out of his pocket and showed it to Harry. He then waved a finger to make it float unmoving midair.

Pointing his wand at it, he cast a spell Harry had never heard of.

" _Fulguris neutrum_ "

A razor thin, crackling thread of lightning joined the gold and his wand for a second before the gold lost its yellowish sheen and gained a greyish hue.

Nicholas pocketed his wand and turned to Harry.

"Gold to lead transmutation is one of the first and simplest things you do in alchemy. Its opposite, lead to gold is one of the last and most difficult. Of course, there's a lot more to alchemy than just transmutation. There are aspects that relate more to potions, but for now, your first job is to master the three Fulguris spells that are the only real tools for transmutation."

Ping!

 **You have gained +1 Int for listening diligently to your teacher!**

"What are the three spells?" Harry asked, immediately dismissing the screen and reopening his notebook.

"Well, there's Fulguris Positrum, the positive particle emitting spell. Fulguris Neutrum, the neutral particle emitting spell. And then there is just plain old Fulguris, which is the negative particle emitting spell…basically a lightning spell. Have you got all of that written? Good, now get your wand and come over to the other side."

When they got to the other side of the room, Nicholas made Harry pull out his wand and point it at the wall.

"The incantation is _Fulguris_ , no wand movements. Understood?"

"Understood," Harry said with a resolute voice.

Nicholas nodded and started speaking again "Good. Now be careful-"

" _FULGURIS!_ "

A blinding flash of light filled the room, almost blinding Harry and knocking him off his feet and right onto his arse.

As his eyes cleared, he saw the screen in front of him.

 **Spell learned!**

 **Fulguris**

 **This spell is used make a highly focused blast of electrons. In other words, it produces lightning.**

 **-120 MP per use**

Annoyed, he mentally closed the screen and took the Nicholas's extended hand.

"As I was about to say," Nicholas said with a chuckle, pulling him to his feet and checking his eyes, "be careful for your eyes."

"Sorry about that." Harry said sheepishly. He looked at the spot he'd been aiming for, and saw that it was now a charred black.

"Don't worry. At least you can cast it just fine. For now, your assignment with this spell is precision and accuracy," Nicholas said before he conjured up a white feather on the table and used his wand to wet it using a bit of water.

He then pointed his wand towards it. " _Fulguris_ " he cast, and unlike the bolt of lightning that had come out earlier, only a small wire thin lightning joined the feather to the wand.

Harry's eyes lost focus for a second.

When Harry refocused on the feather, it was dry. He gaped. Nicholas had dried the feather…using _lightning_. There wasn't a single burn on it.

"It took Albus a year to fully reach that level of control. With you being able to control magic so well since your early life, I expect you to do it by Christmas day. With all three spells. If you do, you get a special reward. If not, you get a punishment. A _bad_ one"

Still marveling at the sheer level of control that Nicholas had over his magic, Harry wondered if he had finally bitten off more than he could possibly chew.

* * *

 _Good night Tom,_ Lisa wrote in her diary before falling into her bed. Holding the diary close to her chest, she fell asleep.

Six months.

Six months he'd spent waiting for the girl to get out of Dumbledore's radar. Six months it had taken him to collect enough magic to make tonight's plan possible. He knew it would be hard, but it was what was necessary.

A few years after he'd been created by his Prime soul piece, the Prime had written into him a single dark potion recipe. The Draught of Restoration, a potion capable of giving a proper body to the Horcrux. No faint apparitions, no half corporeal mockeries that he could make by pulling on a host's magic, but a full proper body, capable of performing feats of magic that only he, Lord Voldemort could perform.

It was a plan that was supposed to be put into action if the horcrux ever came to know that the Prime had somehow been defeated and destroyed. And all the information he'd collected suggested that now was the time to put the plan into action. With more force than he'd ever used, he grabbed onto Lisa's consciousness.

With a twist and a pull, his own consciousness snapped right out of the diary, traveled through the many lines of compulsions he'd weaved and settled into Lisa's head.

Pushing the feeble consciousness of the weak minded girl out of the control of the body with a small tendril of the book's magic, Tom Riddle took control of her body.

A pair of eyes snapped open in the small room, blood red.

Quickly changing into some robes and putting on a cloak with the hood, Tom headed down the stairs of the house and out of the main door. The mother was working tonight, nowhere around to interfere.

He threw the hood up, walked over to the pavement and extended Lisa's wand out onto the road, listening for a second…and waiting.

There was a deafening BANG, and something massive stopped a few centimeters from his extended hand. It was a triple-decker, violently purple bus, which had appeared out of thin air. Gold lettering over the windshield spelled The Knight Bus. Tom took a second to reminisce the days of the orphanage, when this bus was his only way into the wizarding world, before he turned his attention to the conductor in a purple uniform who had leapt out of the bus and begun to speak loudly to the night.

"Welcome to the Knight Bus, emergency transport for the stranded witch or wizard. Just stick out your wand hand, step on board and we can take you anywhere you want to go. My name is Stan Shunpike, and I will be your conductor this evening."

Stan Shunpike finished his speech and peered at him. "Why you wearin a cloak in summer?" Stan said, looking a bit suspicious.

"I've come down with a small bout of Laufey flu. Need to keep warm."

"You don't seem to have no blue skin," Stan said, growing slightly suspicious, "Would ya please take the hood off? Just ta make sure."

"I just want to be on my way," he said, cursing in his head. The red eyes that would show up on Lisa's face would be difficult to explain away.

"Then you wouldn't mind taking off the hood li'l miss would ya?"

Pushing down a small spike of frustration, he slowly moved Lisa's hood out of her face, keeping the red eyes trained on the floor. He simultaneously bent a small amount of magic and cast a small illusion around Lisa.

Stan peered for a second before he lost his suspicion. "Well sorry to inconvenience ya miss, but can't have too shady customers on the ride. Where you headed?"

Handing the shabbily dressed conductor a few sickles, he said, "To the Charing Cross Road."

* * *

Marasmus Borgin had inherited his fifty percent share in the Borgin and Burkes shop from his father, who had established the shop with Caractacus Burke in the late 1800s.

His father's knowledge of dark artefacts and potions ingredients great exceeded any other, and under his tutelage, Marasmus had learned just as much. Today, he had just finished ringing in the day's purchases and hiding all the stashes under the ridiculously complicated wards that Borgin the First had weaved when he'd started the shop.

The Burke in question was on the other side of the shop, grumbling about the rising meat prices. Borgin tuned him out, having no wish to know anything about how much a muggle's ribs cost. The older partner's hag mother had passed on too many genes for Caractacus to eat anything else other than human meat.

Suddenly the bell hanging above the shop door tinkled. Borgin looked up, and saw a small hooded figure coming in and going over to where Burke was cleaning up the potion ingredients on the wall.

"We're closed." he heard Burke's oily voice say.

"I just need a few ingredients please." With some surprise, Borgin noted that it was the voice of a girl. A young one at that.

"Apothecary's out in the Diagon missy. Get outta here if you know what's good for you."

Borgin winced. That didn't bode well for the little girl. Burke was giving out warnings, and he did that only when he played with his food. But those were muggles. This girl was a witch, surely he wouldn't dare risk the attention of the Aurors. Surely not.

"Would you at least look at what I need?"

Burke snatched the list out of her hand and scanned through it, his eyes gaining a gleam.

"Virgin blood! Witch's dearth! I don't know what shop you think you're looking for missie, but mine isn't it."

"I know you have every one of those. And I can pay." The girl was either too dumb or too brave. Either way, Borgin could see Burke giving in to his urges, so he spoke up.

"Caractacus, she's a witch. Think of the Aurors." He said by the way of cautioning.

"Do I _look_ like I care about Aurors? It's been years since I've had proper witch meat for dinner. But I bet a little un like you will be all tender and succulent eh?" Burke asked grabbing the girl's arm roughly.

The hood fell off the girl's face, and Borgin saw her eyes for the first time. The blood red orbs sent a shiver down his spine. A sneer appeared on the little girl's face and he saw a wand slip into her hand. Burke didn't even have time to move before the spell hit him.

" _Crucio!_ "

A scream ripped through the deeper Knockturn Alley. The pedestrians stopped for a second to stare at the storefront, listening to the screams, before walking off, their footsteps quicker than before. This was Knockturn, and nobody cared about others more than themselves.

" _Avada Kedavra_ " he finally heard the girl incant at Burke, just as he thought his head would explode from the noise.

Borgin let out a loud shriek and squeezed his eyes shut, trembling in fear of his life. It was all quiet for a second before he heard footsteps coming towards him.

A wand pressed against his throat, burning hot and the girl spoke in a cheery voice.

"Can I please have what I asked for? Or need I furbish you with some…encouragement"

"NO NO PLEASE I'LL GET IT ALL FOR YOU I SWEAR!" Borgin screamed in terror as he scrambled up to his feet and ran behind the counter scrambling to pull together all the ingredients that Tom had listed out.

* * *

After getting all the ingredients and cleaning up the entire mess with a few well-placed memory charms and fire spells with the stolen wand he had acquired, Tom, in Lisa's body caught the Knight bus back to her home.

He barely made his way into the door before all the magic he had siphoned from the girl through the months got exhausted, and his consciousness snapped back into the diary, making Lisa fall to the floor.

He could feel her awake, feel her confusion at how she got down here from her room. Her hand brushed his diary cover inside her pocket. She pulled him out and wrote, with a scratchy and shaky hand.

 _Tom, I was in my room, talking with you wasn't I? How did I get downstairs?_

Easy questions. Easy answers. He willed the ink to rise to the surface and form words.

 _What are you talking about Lisa, you just told me you were coming down to get a biscuit._

 _Did I?_

There was doubt in that statement, and doubt needed to be removed. He willed the ink to rise up again, this time molding it into a perfect replica of Lisa's handwriting.

' _I'll just go get a biscuit and be right back Tom.'_

The doubt died away. He willed the diary's magic to latch onto the belief and trust and feed it until she believed all that he had said.

 _Oh. I'm sorry for doubting you Tom._

 _No worries Lisa, just know that I'm here, always there for you._

This line somehow sparked a small wisp of endearment in her mind. It wasn't much, but it was enough. The diary's magic latched onto that and fed it, making sure it grow slowly but surely.

He felt her brush the pages of the diary delicately before gently putting it away in her pocket.

With a small bout of satisfaction, he noted that the entire operation had gone without a hitch. Safe again in the depths of his soul container, he thought of how he would work on the potion.

The potion would need months of attention and care to make. He obviously couldn't brew it at the Turpin home with the mother watching. And the girl disappearing and not going to school would make too many people suspicious too soon.

The Draught would have to be brewed and tended to at Hogwarts.

It would be risky. He'd have to somehow remove Dumbledore from the school. And he'd also need more time. He would need at least until Halloween to become corporeal and take full control, which would be necessary for the last few steps of the draught brewing.

His mind went back to his own time at school, and an idea formed…one which would take down a few mudbloods and let those ministry politicians play their blame game and drive Dumbledore from the school.

Yes, he decided. The Chamber of Secrets would open again.

* * *

It had been a week full of practising the same spell over and over again, and it seemed as if Gamer abilities weren't going to be helping him anytime soon. So on the 8th of July, upon the insistence of Perenelle, he had taken an entire day off.

Florean Fortescue had come over for breakfast with the Potters, and Harry had to be really careful about making sure that he called the Flamels by their aliases, Nick and Ellie.

This charade was made even more difficult by the divine chocolate fudge ice cream that Mr. Fortescue had brought over. Harry had to haggle for ten minutes with Perenelle to eat a bowl for breakfast while both Nicholas and Mr. Fortescue snickered at him`` through his struggles.

After he'd finally emerged victorious in that particular battle and sat himself down at the table with a bowl of ice cream, he started paying attention to the conversation.

"So will you be opening late after last night?" Nicholas asked Mr. Fortescue.

"I think I will be. The cooling charms and freezing charms are all working as good as ever, and the fire wards stopped the fire from burning down the parlor. But I do have to help out a bit with the other stores. The lads over at the Menagerie are getting hell from the owls that got loose during the panic."

"There was a fire in Diagon Alley?" Harry asked, concerned.

"Not in Diagon thankfully." Mr. Fortescue said to Harry, handing him the Daily Prophet with the second page open "Just a shady little side alley called Knockturn. I'm telling you Nick. I've been telling all the lads at Diagon to put some gold into fire wards for years. They listened and that's what saved their shops. The scallywags at Knockturn though…"

Harry tuned Fortescue out as read the headline of the tiny article the paper had published about it.

 _KNOCKTURN BURNS_

'Catchy' Harry thought and quickly read through it. The fire had started at a shady shop called Borgin and Burkes. One of the partners, Burke, died and the other survived. Nobody really knew what had started the fire, but only a few shops in the Diagon had really been affected by it.

Feeling slightly sorry for the people who'd gotten hurt, Harry finished his breakfast, and with Perenelle's permission, took another bowl of ice cream up to his room for Hedwig.

When he opened the door, he got a pleasant surprise.

Fawkes and Hedwig were twittering away at each other perched on his study desk.

"Fawkes! How are you? I haven't seen you in so long!" Harry exclaimed, setting down the bowl of ice cream on his table, which was promptly monopolized by Hedwig.

" _Doing quite well Harry. Got a letter for you again."_

Harry picked up the letter that lay on the desk and opened it. It was his school report card. He'd have to remember to get it signed by Nicholas. Pocketing it, he asked the red phoenix, "So how come there isn't a school owl delivering this? I'm glad you're here, but aren't report cards usually delivered by school owls?"

" _Indeed. But Albus seems to have realized that young Hedwig here and I have become friends. He wants me to spend more time with people other than him. Thinks I need to…get out more,"_ the phoenix said, sounding incredibly amused, _"I swear he sometimes forgets that I'm a millennium older than him."_

Harry chuckled before asking, "So what have you been doing after the school let off?"

" _Albus and I had been gone for a while to Chile to meet an ICW delegate. Its not all that interesting, but the parrots that the delegate keeps in his house are quite the beauties."_

"Sounds fun" Harry said before realizing that Hedwig was getting ice cream all over her feathers. "Eat slower Hedwig! Or I swear I'll have to give you a bath."

Letting out a trill of protest, Hedwig burst into fire at the same spot, drying all the chocolate, and then vigorously shook herself, making all the chocolate fall off. With a small chirp of triumph at Harry, she went back to her ice cream.

" _She's a smart one,"_ Fawkes noted, amused.

"That she is" Harry said, before something crossed his mind and he frowned.

" _Anything wrong Harry?"_

"Nothing…it's just that my friend Dean's birthday is coming up and he told me he'd send me a letter inviting me as soon as he got home. It's been almost two weeks and there's no sign of a letter. Not just from him, but from _any_ of my friends."

" _No letters? None?"_

"None. Haven't seen an owl since I left Hogwarts."

" _That is strange. Perhaps you should go visit them and talk about it."_

"I would, but I don't know any of their addresses though."

" _I can help with that!"_ Fawkes said, perking up. With a small burst of flames, he disappeared. Just as Harry started wondering where he'd gone, he flamed back in, this time with a thick book in his claws which he dropped onto the table.

Harry read the cover.

 _Hogwarts Registry: Deputy Head's copy_

"Fawkes! Did you nab this from Professor McGonagall?!" he exclaimed.

"… _Yes. And I recommend you look through it fast before she notices."_

Harry dove in, quickly sifting through to the second year section and noting down the addresses of his friends. Fawkes quickly flamed out, replacing the book from where he had taken it, before coming back.

"Most of them are all pretty far from here. Reckon you could drop me off Fawkes?" Harry asked.

" _I could drop you off, but I can't bring you back. Albus and I will be leaving for Japan soon and he'll be expecting me. I'm already a bit late actually."_

"Well then, I suppose I should go to Dean's house then. It is the closest." Harry said "You can stay Hedwig, finish your ice cream. His house isn't too far away. I'll walk back."

Hedwig chirped an agreement and Harry grabbed onto Fawkes's tail feathers, disappearing in the flames and reappearing in a small deserted alleyway off of the Vincent Street near Vincent Square, around where the registry said Dean lived.

After saying goodbye to Fawkes, Harry spent a few minutes walking all around the Vincent Square, which was a massive playing field, looked at the series of buildings, looking for the relevant house number.

Suddenly he heard his name being called. "Harry! Oi Harry! Over here!"

Harry looked around. It was Dean! He was waving at Harry from inside the field, where he and a bunch of others were playing football. Harry waved at him and went around the boundary fence of Vincent Square to enter the field through the gate. He saw Dean tag out for another guy who took his position and then run over to Harry.

"Harry! How've you been doing mate? Why haven't you been replying to the letters?" Dean asked as they shook hands and headed towards the shade to talk.

Harry was thrown off.

"Letters? I haven't been getting any," he said, frowning, "That's why I came here to talk. I was wondering if anything was wrong."

Dean looked concerned, "That's odd. Ron mentioned you haven't been replying to any of the others' letters as well. The owls always came back without the letter, so they must've given it to somebody…Do you reckon somebody's stealing your mail? That couldn't be it could it?"

Harry thought for a few seconds before answering, "Maybe…I think that it could be. It's not a long shot"

There was a moment's silence as they let the thought sink in. Harry idly thought about how Filch had been intercepting their owls last year and wondered if Dumbledore was somehow involved.

Dean shivered with disgust, "Urgh…just the thought of somebody cutting you off from all your mail like that…so weird. I'll let the others know about it and see if they notice anything strange."

"Thanks mate."

"No worries. Oh, and you're officially invited to my birthday. Drop by early and you can help us put up the balloons and stuff."

Suddenly, a boy from the field yelled in their direction. "Oi Dean! Get back here quick! We gotta get Vikk off the pitch before he scores an own goal!"

"Coming Simon!" Dean yelled back and turned to Harry. "I'll be seeing you day after tomorrow Harry."

"See you then. Good luck for the match mate."

Dean grinned and sprinted back onto the field. Suddenly, a screen popped up in front of him.

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Dean's birthday is coming! Buy a cool gift!**

 **Rewards,**

 **+1 stat point**

 **1000 Exp**

 **Failure,**

 **It's not exactly hard, just buy him a bloody gift you dolt**

 **YES/NO?**

He accepted the quest. Making his way out of the field, he started walking towards the direction of Charing Cross for a few seconds, intending to finish this quest early, before remembering that he could apparate. Feeling a bit stupid, Harry dipped into a side alley and apparated to the roof of an office building near the Charing Cross.

He ran down the stairs and onto the road, making his way through the Leaky Cauldron and into the Diagon Alley.

Making his way into Scribbulus Writing Instruments, he picked out a set of eagle feather quills for Dean, who he knew liked drawing.

As he paid for the set and had it wrapped, a screen popped up in front of him.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Dean's birthday is coming! Buy a cool gift!**

 **Rewards,**

 **+1 stat point**

 **1000 Exp**

He waved away the screen before heading back towards the apartment. There was one thing on his mind. Someone was intercepting his mail, trying to isolate him from the magical world. Who? Why? How? He didn't know.

But he sure as all hell intended to find out.

* * *

 **Pushing out some more fast updates. Mostly because the changes I'm making in these chapters aren't that large. It's just a lot of editing, grammar checking, rewriting dialogue, adding details to scenes, etc.**


	22. Book-II:A Free Slave

Chapter 2:

The next day passed in a blur. Harry wrote letters to each of his friends and had Hedwig go give them to Dean, who then in turn, sent them to their recipients with his own owl, bypassing whoever was filching his mail.

That little trick also confirmed that it wasn't the Flamels or Dumbledore who were stealing his mail since Hedwig was able to bypass whatever they were doing. Flamels & Dumbledore were the only people who could erect functional anti-phoenix wards after all. That one deduction had decimated his entire suspect list since nobody except a select few people actually knew where he was living.

And thus, having figured out a way to work around to the problem and not knowing where to look next, he put the search temporarily on the back burner and headed to Dean's house for his birthday.

They spent most of the afternoon putting up decorations and playing with Dean's baby sisters, until just before five, when someone rang on their doorbell.

"Would you get that please Harry?" Dean said with a groan from under both of his sisters, and their uproariously obese cat, who had decided to pile up on his chest.

Chuckling at the Thomas kids, Harry got up and walked towards the door. Dean's Mum and Dad had gone off to buy some stuff for the party, so the well-sized house felt oddly empty in the warm afternoon. Harry flipped the lock on the door and opened it.

It was a middle-aged man that looked like he was about thirty, and wore a long colorful coat and a cap that would have made Sherlock Holmes proud. He was looking down at a paper pad that had lots of writing on it.

'Clearly, a wizard' Harry thought as he noticed the ministry badge on his pocket, and asked, "Can I help you?"

"Yes please," the man said, not looking up "I'm looking for the house of one Mr. Thomas. Could you please point me towards it?"

"This is it," Harry answered, "I'm afraid Mr. Thomas is out for a few more minutes."

"That's really alright, I'm just here from the Fl-" the man looked up and stopped talking. He'd seen Harry's scar. "Er…"

Harry sighed, cursing the fact that the most famous scar in the nation was on his forehead. Why his forehead? Why not the back of his neck? Or his underarm? Or the foot?

Trying to diffuse any awkwardness, he extended his hand and said, "Harry Potter. A pleasure to meet you."

That seemed to shock the man into action. He grabbed Harry's hand and shook it, "Oh. Hello Mr. Potter, Gavin, sir, Gavin Melvinson. From the Department of Magical Transportation, here to install the Floo connection. Is Mr. Thomas's son a friend of yours?"

"Indeed," Harry replied while checking the floating window above him to make sure that it was indeed who he said he was.

 **Gavin Melvinson, DMT Floo Installer**

 **Lv-28**

"Who is it Harry?" Dean called from behind him, having freed himself from his sisters "Is it the Floo guy? You can let him in."

"Yeah. Got it," he called back and let the man inside, who made a beeline to the fireplace. Dean and Harry followed him to watch.

He pulled out a few odd golden looking contraptions and measured the fireplace with them. With a wave of his wand, he set the fireplace ablaze and pulled out a full set of bellows and other assorted instruments from his pocket, which must have been magically expanded to hold it, and blew on the fireplace with it once. Then he placed a flowerpot full of Floo powder on the mantelpiece.

Turning to Dean, he said, "That should be it. I've registered your address as 'Thomas Home' as your letter requested. You'll receive the manual for maintenance along with a receipt in a few days. You can go ahead and use the Floo now."

"Thank you Mr. Melvinson" Dean said with a smile.

"My pleasure Mr. Thomas. Would mind terribly if I apparate out from here. Finding a spot outside away from muggles is really hard this time of the day."

"Of course not. Please, go right ahead." Dean said.

With a tip of his hat to both Harry and Dean, Gavin Melvinson apparated away.

Dean sprang into action as soon as the Floo installer was gone. Grabbing some powder out of the flowerpot, he threw it into the fireplace and muttered an address before yelling into the green fire, "It is done! Come on through guys!"

He stood back from the fireplace, and seeing Harry's puzzled expression, explained, "Ron and Terry were waiting for the Floo to be set up to come through. Both of them live too far away to come by flying, so Terry just headed over to Ron's house and they should be Flooing in any moment."

And just as he had said this, the fire erupted into a massive blaze before two familiar boys stepped out of the flame, their faces split open in grins.

"Happy Birthday Dean!" they said in unison before stuffing the presents they'd brought into his hands. After a few minutes of catching up, they all moved to the party room to sip on lemonades.

"So who else is coming?" asked Harry.

There was no reply from Ron or Terry, both of whom were enraptured by the TV show DVD that Dean had left playing. Harry's observe on the TV playing the show showed what it was.

 **1991 Emerson TC1369 Television Set**

 **It is a device that combines a tuner, display, and loudspeakers for the purpose of viewing television.**

 **Currently playing - Doctor Who**

There were some sounds of hustle and bustle from the kitchen, where Mrs. Thomas had started on the dinner after she had returned.

Dean, thankfully, had already seen the episodes and was available to answer Harry's question. "Just us, and Hermione with the Patil twins. Mum said we should invite one of Hermione's friends as well, so I invited Padma. Figured it would have just been rude not to ask Parvati. Hermione said that the Patils were really fascinated by their car when they visited her place, so Padma and Parvati will be coming with her by road."

The doorbell rang at that very moment.

Harry shot a grin at Dean. "Oddly convenient isn't it?"

With a grin back, Dean got up from his seat to open the door. A few seconds later Hermione, Padma and Parvati poured into the party room with him. The next half hour was spent trying to explain Doctor Who to the Patil twins.

"Out of the way, out of the way!" called Mrs. Thomas, entering the room with what appeared to be a football. Seconds later Harry realized that it was Dean's birthday cake. When the cake had finally landed in the middle of the table, Dean gave his mum a hug while Hermione explained to the Patils as much as she knew about the game of football. By seven o'clock all the adult guests had arrived, and the cake had been cut and moved into the dining room.

Everyone was nibbling on their own pieces, sitting content on the sofa, and at some point or the other, they had all collectively decided that they were getting bored and would wanted to play a game. Dean, having an idea, stood up and declared, "We could play I Dare You."

"Spin the bottle rules!" Ron announced. "Otherwise I'm not playing."

"Spin the bottle rules it is." Dean agreed. "Everybody ready?"

"No stupid or dirty dares, or I swear I'll jinx the person who asks it when we get back to Hogwarts." Hermione said fiercely before agreeing to play, along with everybody else.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Play I Dare You with your friends!**

 **Reward-**

 **100xp**

 **Failure-**

 **Reputation as a spoilsport**

 **YES/NO?**

With a shrug, Harry accepted it and joined in as well. The exp was a pittance, but this was just for fun.

They cleaned up the middle of the room and Dean laid out the rules, "We spin the bottle and then come up with a dare for whoever has to do it. The entire group decides points for that dare. First to get to fifteen wins. Alright? Fair enough?"

There were various sounds of agreement from around the room. Harry's personal favorite sound of agreement was Ron's flippant fart and the subsequent groans of disgust.

"Three . . . Two . . . One . . . Go!" Dean said, spinning the bottle and starting the game.

Fifteen minutes later, Ron was suckling on a raw lemon, his face looking like a dried raisin, the Patil twins were dared by Harry to try speaking in total sync like the Weasley twins, which they tried and absolutely failed to do, and Terry had ended up having to lick Ron's foot, which had been quite gross.

The worst of all, or best depending upon who you ask, had been Hermione's dare, in which Ron had dared her to throw a book into the fireplace. She had done it after much coaxing and persuasion but kept giving Ron the stink eye, promising some serious revenge for later.

The points lay as follows.

 **Dean - 0**

 **Harry - 0**

 **Ron - 3**

 **Terry - 3**

 **Parvati - 2**

 **Padma - 2**

 **Hermione - 5**

Hermione gave the bottle a spin, and it landed on Harry, who had yet to have a turn. He groaned.

"Dare or Dare, Harry?" Hermione asked with a grin that didn't bode well for him.

"I wonder what I'll choose from that incredibly diverse set of choices."

The rest of the room chuckled, while Hermione laid out her dare, "I dare you to send a letter, to the Daily Prophet. About how you discovered that Hedwig is actually a chicken in disguise and not a phoenix."

"No…" Harry's voice was filled with dread, "They've been raving about Hedwig and me ever since some kid got a photo of her on my shoulder. This will…this will…I don't even know what this will do. And then there's Hedwig herself! She'll kill me! You're evil Hermione."

"That's the fun of it." Hermione said, her grin unmoving, "So Harry what is it going to be? For eight points. Is Hedwig the chicken, or are you?"

Harry hesitated for a second, before the forfeit of licking the rim of Dean's sister's potty seat came into his mind, and he decided to do it. Screw being the wizarding world's savior, there was absolutely no way he was going to lick a toddler's toilet.

It took Harry a few seconds to pen down a note and attach it to the leg of Dean's owl Rudy. The entire group converged onto the window to see Harry send his letter away. With a final deep breath, Harry opened the window, and with a flap of her wings, Rudy took off.

They stood there, staring at the tawny owl fly away for a second, before Harry went back to his seat and spun the bottle again, this time falling on the birthday boy Dean himself.

However, before he could give his dare, there was a muffled but distinct pop that came from outside the house. Startled, Dean and Harry ran over to the window again, only to be shocked to a standstill.

Rudy was flying back without the letter, yet there was no way she could have delivered it to the Prophet in such a short time. Harry and Dean stared at the owl for a second before exchanging a meaningful glance, each having a pretty good idea of what this meant. They made their way back to the group and told them that it was nothing. The players decided to excuse that round with a confused shrug and went back to the game.

But Harry's mind wasn't in the game anymore. He, just like Dean beside him, had a nasty feeling that he had just heard the letter thief in action.

Unknown to them, a pair of large eyes watched from the bushes outside the window.

* * *

The next weeks passed with rigorous alchemy spell practice, Harry desperately trying to get the alchemy skill window to pop up. And then there were Harry's desperate attempts at catching the letter thief.

He would go to the post office at Diagon Alley, borrow owls, tie random letters to their legs and send them off. Then he would use his invisibility cloak to follow them using Unicorn Boost speed. Yet every single time, the same thing happened.

Every time, the owl would rise up into the skies and vanish into the clouds, and every time Harry would hear a small but distinct pop before the owl would come back to him without the letter.

Even having Hedwig follow the owl and see what was happening didn't work.

And the only letter he had gotten without involving Hedwig was from the Minister, that Dumbledore himself delivered to him when he came to visit the Flamels. It contained a message from the Minister who was inviting him for a personal tour around the ministry in mid-August.

Harry had sent an acceptance letter.

And soon, amidst burns from lightning spells and ink stains from hours of note taking and homework, July passed.

Harry lay on his bed staring at the clock on his wall, that read 11:59 of the 30th of July. His mind was filled with oddly nostalgic thoughts of how far he had come from last year. He had become what he was meant to become. He had made so many friends. And he had found an actual home.

Harry smiled.

Despite Quirrell, his own numerous near-fatal misadventures, and lately the letter thief, he had truly found a place for himself.

The clock struck twelve, and with a really odd looking burst of virtual confetti, a rainbow colored screen popped up.

Ping!

 **It's your 12th birthday! Congratulations! Here are two presents!**

 **A Stat boost - Take +3 to each one of your stats!**

 **Your new stats are:**

 **STR-17**

 **VIT-23(+4)=27**

 **DEX-22(+4)=26**

 **INT-38**

 **WIS-40**

 **LUC-27**

 **A new skill has been created!**

 **Modern All-Speak, Lv-MAX**

 **You can perfectly understand and speak all modern human languages. This skill does not, however, grant you the ability to read or write any of them. You have to work and practice for that.**

Harry could almost feel his brain's language centers rewiring. He was ecstatic at the new skill. Even if it just granted him the ability to speak all languages, and not read or write them, it was still an amazingly powerful skill by and in itself.

With a content smile, he fell asleep.

The next morning, after a breakfast, he was pushed out of the apartment by Perenelle and told to not return until well in the afternoon, since she wanted the decorations to be a surprise.

Hedwig was feeling terrible due to her being near a burning day, and thus, she stayed in Harry's room, nibbling on the chocolate Harry had left there for her.

Taking the elevator down to the ground floor and going outside the building, Harry wondered where he should go. He wasn't in the mood to grind; he didn't want to deal with rotting zombies on his birthday. So with no destination in mind, he just started walking through the streets, enjoying the sights he was seeing.

After a while of wandering around, he noticed the sun getting higher, and headed towards the nearest park, to spend some time in the shade.

Walking into the famous Whitehall gardens, Harry spent a few minutes admiring the amazing view of the London skyline before he walked into the shaded areas. There were a few benches, most of which were all occupied, some by couples enjoying a romantic day, others by small kids playing and goofing around.

Harry ducked under a branch of a sprawling oak tree and found a long hidden bench, upon which an about twenty looking Asian man was writing down stuff on his notepad at breakneck speeds. His bag lay beside him.

A window popped up in the corner of Harry's vision.

 **Recommended Language: Japanese**

 **Activate All Speak: Japanese?**

 **YES/NO**

Harry pressed yes, and in the process of taking a step towards the man, accidentally stepped on a twig. The man's hand stopped and he looked up.

Harry spoke, " _Can I sit here? All the other benches are occupied._ "

The man looked a bit surprised at Harry speaking Japanese, but gave a short nod and moved his bag to make space. Then he went back to writing on his notepad.

Harry took the seat, and looked at the man's notes. They were all in Japanese, which Harry could not read, so he just leaned back on his seat, closed his eyes and listened to the birds sing, falling into a small trance.

" _ARRGGGHH_ "

The yell of frustration from next to him brought him out into the real world. The Japanese man had buried his head into his hands.

" _Is anything wrong?_ " Harry asked, slightly concerned.

" _It's nothing…_ " the man hesitated for a second before he threw his hands into the air, " _Ah what the hell, if I fail in ever making this then at least someone will have heard of my idea._ "

And he told Harry of his story. His name was Tajiri Satoshi, and he was a game designer from Japan who had come here to pitch his new idea for a game to the executive board of a big company. He had the meeting with them in a few hours.

But he didn't have the entire game's plan complete in his mind. The more times he read through his notes, the more and more flaws he found. And he was more sure than ever that they would reject his idea, and his work would go to waste.

" _What type is this game you're designing?_ " Harry asked.

" _Its an RPG. Do you know how those work?_ "

Harry smirked, " _I think I have a decent idea._ "

" _Good. That is good. Mine is a bit different than most. You have to go around capturing various monsters and use them to battle your enemies, who also have their own monsters. You can use items and healers to help you. Your goal is to catch all the monsters and foil the enemy plan._ " Tajiri explained.

" _That sounds like a pretty good game idea_ " Harry commented, " _What's wrong then?_ "

" _Its the entire progression system that is off. What is supposed to keep the player from just quitting the game? And also, I don't even have that many monsters designed. Barely forty. I need more time. It's all just gone wrong._ " Tajiri said, resting his head on his hand again.

Harry felt bad for him. The poor man had probably spent a lot of time designing his game and was now close to losing all his hard work.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Help Tajiri fix the issues in his game!**

 **Reward-**

 **8000xp**

 **RPG game designer's manual**

 **Failure-**

 **Tajiri loses everything and commits suicide**

 **YES/NO?**

Seeing the failure results, Harry quickly pressed yes.

" _Have you considered an exp based level up system?_ " Harry asked after taking a few seconds to think about what kept him playing his own life's game.

The man looked like Harry was crazy for suggesting something so simple. " _Of course I have. It just doesn't fit well with the game to have the character level up when the monsters are battling_."

" _The character? You got me wrong. I was talking about leveling up the creatures, the monsters you speak of. When they go into combat, and they level up. You can give them new attacks and abilities as they level up. You could even have them change into better creature in a new evolution of sorts._ " Harry explained his idea.

The man's face grew pensive before his eyes lit up.

" _Yes…yes…that solves everything!_ " He pulled out a new page and started scribbling just as fast as before. " _And I basically triple the number of catchable monsters. Evolution! That's the key! I've got it! I must go and prepare the presentation for this."_

He stood up and grabbed his bag enthusiastically, stuffing the notepad into it, before turning to Harry.

" _Thank you Harry Potter"_ he said, _"Thank you very much. You have helped me more than you could ever know._ "

Harry stood up and wished Tajiri luck for his meeting, and then watched as he ducked below the oak tree branch and headed out of the park. Harry sat back on the bench, feeling happy for the man. A screen popped up in front of him.

 **Quest success!**

 **Help Tajiri fix the issues in his game!**

 **Reward-**

 **8000xp**

 **RPG game designer's manual added to inventory**

He leaned back into his seat started arranging his inventory, just to pass time until the sun went down a bit and he could head back to the house. A few minutes passed, when suddenly he felt a prickle on the back of his neck.

Harry tensed. He was being watched.

Carefully, he sent his mana out and about into his surroundings, activating his Area Sense skill to the maximum.

 **Area Sense : Someone is near you. 2 o'clock.**

Nonchalantly trying not to move his head, he slowly looked at the spot that Area sense indicated, only to find nothing.

Deducing that the watcher must be invisible, he activated his mage sight. Due to the lack of any magical stuff in the park, it all looked dark, with the occasional magical plant illuminating the world around him.

And the blaring yellow mana of a small hunched creature that stood exactly where the area sense had told him the watcher would be. Harry observed the creature, snapping himself out of mage sight into normal sight.

 **Dobby (Status: Slave Bond)**

 **Lv-23**

 **HP-2025/2025**

 **MP-1350/1350**

 **Race- House Elf**

 **Str-5**

 **Vit-27**

 **Dex-12**

 **Int-8**

 **Wis-12**

 **Luc-4**

 **Dobby is a male house elf who serves a family. His masters treat him cruelly, and as such, he, like most house elves, has health issues and low self esteem. He is a big fan of Harry Potter and wants to shake hands with him in real life someday.**

 **He wants to stop Harry from going to Hogwarts to protect him from his master's plan. He is trying to do so by stealing his mail and making him think his friends have forgotten him.**

He had found his letter thief! Dobby the house elf! As Harry read his description, a slight feeling of foreboding filled his mind. The elf's master had some sort of plan, that seemed to be based around Hogwarts. And whatever it was, Dobby sure seemed to religiously believe that it was targeted at him.

Harry hadn't moved a muscle on the outside. But on the inside, his mind was working at speeds beyond imagination. Over a dozen different hypotheses formed in his mind, all just as likely as the other, but none were confirmed. He needed more data…more information.

And he knew just how to get it.

"ID Create" he whispered under his breath and disappeared from that isolated bench on the park and into the ID. He quickly pulled out his invisibility cloak and covered himself before he walked a bit to the side and activated his mage sight.

"ID Escape" he muttered, and the red-skied dimension shattered. With his mage sight turned on, he could easily see the invisible elf looking around the bench trying to see what had happened to Harry and where he had disappeared to.

Moving quickly before the house-elf gave up on his search, Harry snuck up behind him, intending to grab him and drop into an empty ID to ask him some questions. He used his Unicorn Boost to move as fast as he could and grabbed the elf, who let out a startled squeak. But before he could even get the command for ID creation out of his mouth, a small window popped up.

 **Warning! You are being forcefully apparated!**

And that was all he saw before the world around him spun, and with one of the most powerful bouts of pain than he had ever felt, rivaling even Quirrell's Cruciatus, Harry was twisted away from the park, the sheer pressure around him draining his lungs of air and knocking him unconscious.

Now, elf apparition was as much a form of defense as it was a medium of travel. If some unseen predator would catch hold of the elf, the elf would simply apparate _with_ the predator, causing an immense amount of pain to it. While the pain could be prevented if the elf wished so, Dobby was in full instinct mode, and caused Harry a world of hurt.

It was a few minutes before Harry's eyes reopened and refocused, after which he took stock of his surroundings.

He was, in what appeared to be, something like his own childhood cupboard, only smaller. A red towel hung from a hook on one of the walls, and a small shabby sleeping rug lay on the floor to one side. The only light came from a small candle. A strange looking creature with flappy ears, which Harry realized was Dobby the house elf, was fussing over a small cut that Harry had somehow gotten on his hand.

The large-eyed elf caught sight of Harry looking at him and promptly devolved into a blubbering mess.

"Oh! Harry Potter! So long has Dobby wanted to meet you, sir…Such an honor it is…Dobby is sorry for any pain Dobby may have caused to sir. Dobby was startled and-"

"Quite alright Dobby. No worries," Harry assured the rambling elf, trying to calm him, "Although I would like those letters you've been stealing back." Harry said, stuffing the invisibility cloak into his pocket and pulling himself up to rest himself against the wall. It really had been a painful ride.

The elf looked totally thrown off. "Har-Harry Potter knows about Dobby…what Dobby has been doing?"

"I know enough. But I'd like to hear why you did it" he said vaguely, knowing that his observe only showed the very basic amount of information. He needed to get Dobby to talk.

"Harry Potter mustn't be angry with Dobby. Dobby has them here, sir," said the elf, hesitating, as he pulled a thick wad of envelopes from the inside of the tattered pillowcase he was wearing and handed them to Harry.

Dobby blinked anxiously up at Harry. "Dobby hoped…if Harry Potter thought his friends had forgotten him…Harry Potter might not want to go back to school, sir…"

"Why would you want that Dobby? Is there any reason for it?" Harry asked, suppressing the urge to vehemently deny Dobby's wish.

"Oh, yes, sir," said Dobby earnestly. "Dobby should tell you, sir…it is difficult, sir…Dobby wonders where to begin…"

"The beginning is a good place. Or we could start with who is your master?" said Harry, trying to coax him into spilling.

"It is difficult sir…Dobby cannot violate any direct orders from master…and master has ordered Dobby to not tell anybody who he belongs to. Legends of Harry Potter sir's wit has traveled far among house elves sir. Dobby is sure it would be no trouble to sir, but Harry Potter sir must guess correctly." he said, his expression desperate.

'Alright then' Harry thought, going through all he knew about house elves, 'House-elves only come with big houses and manors. Which means it could only be one of the Sacred Twenty Eight families. It would make sense for the richer ones to have elves. So that means that the Notts and Malfoys are the most viable choices.'

"Do you work for the Malfoys?" Harry asked, naming his first choice, hoping his luck stats would kick in.

"YES!" Dobby let out a loud exclaim before his face scrunched up. Suddenly he ran over to the candle and started burning his fingers in the flame.

"Don't - what are you doing?" Harry hissed, springing up and pulling Dobby back.

"Dobby had to punish himself, sir," said the elf, who had gone slightly cross-eyed. "Dobby gave away his family's identity. Dobby will have to shut his ears in the oven door for this."

Harry stared.

The books didn't mention this. It said that elves were bonded to their house and would serve whoever that owned it, but there was nothing about making an elf punish itself. With a slight gasp of horror, Harry realized that the red towel that hung in the hook was actually not red in color, but stained through with blood.

"There is a plot, Harry Potter." Dobby started talking again, his voice trembling as he tended to his burnt hands. "A plot to make most terrible things happen at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry this year," he whispered, suddenly trembling all over. "Dobby has heard of bits and pieces of it for months, sir. Harry Potter must not put himself in peril. He is too important, sir!"

"What terrible things?" asked Harry at once.

Dobby made a choking noise and then banged his head frantically against the wall.

"All right!" cried Harry, grabbing the elf's arm to stop him. "You can't tell me. I understand. But why are you warning me?" A sudden, unpleasant thought struck him. "Hang on…this hasn't got anything to do with Voldemort, has it?

Dobby clapped his hands over his bat ears and moaned, "Ah, speak not the name, sir! Speak not the name!"

"Sorry," said Harry quickly. "But _does_ it have to do with him?"

"Dobby does not know sir. But Dobby knows that it will be the cause of mortal danger at Hogwarts for those not like master."

"Not like master?" Harry asked, "You mean not pureblood?"

Dobby nodded, pulling on his ears. There was a moment's silence as Dobby struggled to not bang himself against the wall and Harry used Gamer's Mind to sort through all that he had just found out. An odd sort of calm anger overtook his mind, as his Gamer's Mind quickly dismissed that it was a random chance that Malfoy had decided to target Hogwarts right after he'd pegged Harry as a potential dark lord.

Malfoy was either trying to eliminate all those he thought were a bad influence on a new dark lord…or…or he was _testing_ him. Much like Dumbledore had tested him last year to see if he was a hero, Malfoy was testing him to see if he was a dark wizard.

Having reached that conclusion, he knew one thing. He wouldn't be calmly following the steps through the test this time. He would break the living shit out of it.

"Are we at the Malfoy Manor now?" he asked the elf

Dobby nodded, "Harry Potter sir is in Dobby's cupboard now. Poor Dobby couldn't even get something for Harry Potter sir to drink for fear of master!"

"That's alright Dobby. Is there anybody home now?"

"Mistress and Young master have gone for holidays sir. Master is in his office now." Dobby answered after a small pause clearly wondering where this was going.

"I need to find out more about what is happening Dobby. And then, we will see if the threat is bad enough that I won't go to Hogwarts. I need you lead me to Lucius's office. Nothing more and nothing less. Can you do that to me without punishing yourself?" Harry asked, pleading the elf to say yes.

"Does Harry Potter promise to consider not going to Hogwarts School?"

"I _will_ consider it."

Hesitatingly, Dobby gave a single nod, and beckoning for Harry to follow, opened the door to the cupboard and walked off. Harry followed right behind.

They ducked under many paintings and hid from many armors before reached the door of the office.

Harry told Dobby to stay back, and then took a deep breath.

Lucius Malfoy was a creature of words. Harry could not get him to spill using subtle manipulations and words. The only way to get to Lucius Malfoy was to get him hard and fast when he would have his guard down. What he was going to do wasn't going to be nice. But if Lucius Malfoy had done something bad enough to warrant a house elf going against his master and risking his own life to warn one of the victims, it was sure as all hell warranted.

He knocked on the door.

"Come in" came the silky voice of the senior Malfoy and the door's lock clicked open.

Harry opened the door and walked in, not wasting any time before activating Hydromancy and slowing the blood flow in Lucius's veins down to a crawl. Unlike the time at the New Year's Ball however, he wasn't holding back.

"I will ask this once Lucius." he calmly asked "What is your plan for Hogwarts this year? What have you done and how can it be stopped?"

"I have no idea what you are talking about," the blonde said in between heaves, falling off of his chair from a dizzy head due to low blood pressure. "And I swear I will call the Aurors and have you thrown into Azkaban if you don't st-"

" **I suggest you answer before I get too impatient and stop your heart in your chest Lucius. I am not feeling particularly patient today.** " said Harry activating bloodlust and taking his blood control from the lowest blood flow levels to extremely high levels, making Lucius's blood pressure and heart rate skyrocket abnormally. Lucius's calm bearings flew out of the window as he started hyperventilating and sweating bullets.

Harry was making his very own body was working against him.

"I DON"T KNOW! I don't know! Every time I do anything that could possibly get me into bad waters with the law I perform a dark memory spell on myself. Nothing can bring back the memory unless a specific set of trigger events happen. Even if I did do anything in Hogwarts then I'm of no use to you" Lucius rambled out, Harry's magic making him lose all of his famous poise and cool.

"Why?" Harry asked. "Why mess with your own mind?"

"The aurors have always been suspicious of me, ever since I got acquitted of my crimes. If one of them ever decided to play vigilante and force-fed me truth serum then I would be a gone case. This way there is quite literally no way they can convict me of anything, since convicting a memory-less criminal is legal grey area."

Harry started trying to think of ways he could counteract the memory spell. If this would have been obliviate, then he could have countered it. But an unknown dark spell…that was beyond him. Suddenly, a loud yell pulled him out of his musings.

"YOU!"

Lucius had caught sight of his elf, who was standing behind Harry, "YOU LET HIM IN! YOU BETRAYED YOUR FAMILY!"

Dobby looked stricken.

"Eyes on me Lucius." Harry said warningly, "And talk. Or I will put an end to you now."

But Lucius was having none of it. With a mad rage in his eyes, he yelled, "KILL YOURSELF! KILL YOURSELF, YOU FILTHY BETRAYER!"

Harry instantly knew that Dobby would be forced to do what Lucius directly commanded, even if it was to kill himself. He turned and snapped a _Petrificus Totalus_ at Dobby, freezing the elf before he could even move towards the butter knife that lay on a nearby desk.

He then angrily slammed Lucius in the head with his fist, knocking him out before pulling out his wand and incanting, " _Obliviate_ " erasing all of the past few minutes from his mind.

Making sure the man was unconscious using an observe, he immediately moved to where Dobby was lying petrified.

It was obvious that the Slave Bond was forcing Dobby to obey the direct order from Lucius. To help Dobby, he would have to remove the Slave Bond status. With a curse, he remembered that Dobby was more than 10 levels above him, which meant that Harry couldn't use the Healing Touch on him. So with no way out left, he tried his normal healing skill.

Ping!

 **You are attempting to heal somebody with several ailments! Please chose one to heal:**

 **Low bone density**

 **Slave Bond**

Harry selected the Slave Bond, and to his surprise, an unfamiliar window popped up.

 **WARNING: Slave Bond has status Ancient Magic on it, increasing cost of removal by 2000MP.**

 **Total Cost - 2300MP**

Harry stared at the window in shock before pulling up his own stats.

 **HP - 1675/1675**

 **MP - 1425/1425**

He floundered for a second, clueless about what to do before he figured it out and activated the Wardstone perk, remembering that he was outside Hogwarts and could use the ludicrously overpowered perk now.

 **Wardstone perk activated!**

 **Grants +1000 HP and +1000 MP when activated it at the cost of -25 MP per minute. All wounds are healed. All ailments cured. +20 Str,+20 Vit, +20 Dex.**

And then he finally pressed his healing mana into Dobby.

Ping!

 **Do you wish to heal - Status: Slave Bond**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry pressed yes, and with a small flash of light, the bond disappeared. He freed Dobby from the Petrification Charm.

Dobby stilled for a second before his large eyes widened even more, and he found his voice "Harry Potter freed Dobby! Dobby is free!" the little elf yelled as he leaped to his feet and went around doing a little jig, making Harry smile.

"Is there anything Dobby can do for sir? Anything?" the newly free elf asked.

"Just promise you'll stop your plans to keep me out of Hogwarts. I can handle myself, as you saw, and I can't let whatever Lucius has planned hurt my friends."

Dobby's eyes teared up a bit, "Dobby promises Harry Potter sir."

"Good," Harry said with a smile, "Now is there any way you could get me out of here and back home? I don't want to be late for my own birthday."

* * *

It was breakfast time at the Flamel house next morning, and Harry was a bit preoccupied with the thoughts of what had happened. After he'd been popped back to his room by Dobby, he hadn't been the best company he could have been in his birthday party. There had been a few books and packets of candy given as gifts and they'd played a few games, but he couldn't help but feel uneasy about what Lucius Malfoy had said. Or rather not said.

"Harry?" said Nicholas suddenly, looking up from a letter he was reading through, breaking Harry out of his musings, "The Weasleys want to take all of you kids to the Diagon to shop for school supplies today."

"Us kids?" Harry asked.

"You, Hermione Granger, Terry Boot and Dean Thomas. Along with all of their bunch." Nicholas replied.

"I think you should go. Make a little group outing out of it." Perenelle said with a smile. A window popped up in front of Harry.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Buy all your school supplies with the Weasleys!**

 **Reward,**

 **10,000 Exp**

 **Failure,**

 **Failure at Hogwarts**

 **YES/NO?**

"I think I'll do that." Harry agreed with Perenelle with a smirk, after pressing yes "Save you, two senior citizens, the pain of going outside."

Perenelle proceeded to swat Harry across the head.

"Well you better get ready and grab some money from Perenelle." said Nicholas "The letter said the Floo address is the Burrow. Just give the doorman near the fireplace a sickle and he'll give you the Floo powder."

Harry ran upstairs and changed, making sure Hedwig's bowl was full of chocolate and fruit to keep her comfortable while he was gone. The upcoming Burning day was really taking a toll on her.

Taking the small bag of gold from Perenelle, Harry dropped it into the massive supply of money he had in his inventory just to keep up pretenses. He waved goodbye to the Flamels, and walked over to the end of the hallway into the small room which held the Floo station. Handing the doorman a sickle as per instructed, Harry collected a handful of Floo powder.

"The Burrow!" he said out loud, stepping into the fire.

After a few seconds of flashing lights and darkness, he shot right out of the fireplace at the Weasley household with tremendous force. Luckily, he had a very high Dex, and was much more balanced than he was ever before.

Flipping himself mid-air, he landed on his feet.

The sound of some applause filled his ears. He looked to his right to see Ron, Terry and what looked like two older and cooler versions of Ron clapping, looking quite impressed with Harry's acrobatic skills.

Harry gave a small bow and made his way over to them, noticing the chessboard on the small table they were sitting at. He pulled out a chair and sat down.

"Haven't the others arrived?"

"Hermione and Dean will meet us in the Leaky Cauldron after a couple of hours," Terry said before turning around to the two redheads that Harry deduced to be Charlie and Bill, "I'm telling you. He can beat Ron at chess. He's done so a number of times before."

Bill looked at him doubtfully, which Harry took as a personal insult. So after shaking hands with the eldest Weasley kids, he pushed Terry out of the seat opposite to Ron and took it. With a predatory grin at Ron, Harry moved his first pawn.

A few moves in, he heard a loud squeak behind him. He looked around, and barely only saw a blur of red hair running up the stairs. Turning back around, he looked at Ron questioningly.

"Ginny," said Ron in an undertone, moving his pawn. "You've met her before haven't you? She's been going on about meeting you all summer."

Harry, not knowing how to respond to that, stored it away in his mind and focused on the game.

"Bloody hell! He's actually doing it, Charlie!" Bill muttered after the next few moves passed, "He's beating Ron!"

"Finally someone to avenge all our shattered chess pieces," Charlie said.

"Hey! Aren't you two supposed to support me? I'm your brother!" Ron exclaimed indignantly.

"You murdered our chessmen. You're a chessman killer! And Harry Potter is going to wreck vigilant justice on you. Die!" Charlie yelled at Ron dramatically.

"No talk of anyone murdering anyone Charlie" came the voice of Mrs. Weasley from behind them "Hello Harry."

"Hello Mrs. Weasley, thanks for inviting me over."

"Oh, it's nothing dear, I just got your letter saying how much you liked the fudge I sent for Christmas, so I made some for you today," she said, putting down a platter of the heavenly chocolate fudge next to the chessboard and ruffling Harry's hair. Harry promptly thanked her and stuffed a few into his mouth.

And he froze.

Chocolate fudge!

Oh lord! Chocolate fudge!

The 100 HP restoring Chocolate fudge!

Harry developed a sudden urge to hit himself as he realized that had he saved some of that fudge for later and not gobbled them up in the days after Christmas, he wouldn't have had to risk his life in the mirror chamber trying to break the wards. All he would have had to do was gobble up chocolate fudges to keep his HP up and he would have been perfectly fine.

Harry's left eye suddenly developed a rather severe twitch.

Shoving that line of thought out of his mind, deciding that what was gone was gone, he angrily went back to one by one murdering Ron's chessmen. A small crowd of redheads was forming around them as Mr. Weasley and the twins joined in to watch the chess battle as well.

It was around the third match that he suddenly noticed Ron's wand lying on the chess table.

It was a really battered-looking one. It was chipped in places and something white was glinting at the end, that Harry recognized as the Unicorn hair. Suddenly he realized why Ron's marks were always so dreadful.

Well. He was a friend, Harry thought, and they were headed to Diagon Alley. He could always just buy him a new one there. Ron _had_ given him quite a rare book about runes that Bill had read when he was preparing for applying as Curse breaker with the goblins. Helping him buy a wand was the least he could do.

Harry hesitated on that train of thought, as he remembered Ron's obstinate dislike for people buying him stuff. 'There is no way he'd accept it' he thought.

Harry's divided focus meant that Ron had snuck up a pawn on him without him noticing.

"YES!" Ron said, and took down Harry's king, before he stood up and started doing a little jig of victory. Gracefully conceding, Harry let Charlie take his place. He stood there, pretending to watch Ron decimate Charlie, but his mind was elsewhere, thinking about what to do. He needed to get a ginormous amount of this magical HP boosting food into his inventory for future emergencies, and he had just taken up the mission of forcing Ron to buy a new wand. How could he strike two birds with one stone…well…spell.

A sound of a familiar voice humming reached his ears from the kitchen, and Harry had an idea. There was one person that Harry knew Ron would obey if she asked him to let Harry buy him a wand. He headed towards the kitchen.

"Mrs. Weasley?" Harry asked, walking into the kitchen.

"Yes Harry?" she replied, putting down the ladle she was using to stir the pot she was working on.

"Its just that…Mrs. Weasley…I was wondering if you'd let me gift Ron a new wand."

Mrs. Weasley looked taken aback for a second before her eyes softened and she said, "I'm afraid not Harry. I appreciate the sentiment, but wands are ridiculously expensive, and I cannot possibly allow you to spend that much on him just for a gift."

"A gift?" Harry backpedaled, changing his strategy, "Oh no no. It's not a gift. I need something in return."

Mrs. Weasley grew a bit wary. "And what is that Harry?"

"The recipe to your chocolate fudge," said Harry flatly.

"The what?" she said, looking completely thrown off.

"The recipe. To the chocolate fudge. I have honestly never eaten anything that good before. I really want to know how you do it."

"Oh Harry," Mrs. Weasley said, "you do know you can Floo over whenever you want and I'd happily bake some for you."

"I'm afraid not Mrs. Weasley. I appreciate the sentiment, but chocolate is ridiculously expensive and I can't possibly allow you to spend that much on me just because I start craving chocolate fudge." Harry said with a tiny smirk

Mrs. Weasley chuckled, wiping off her hands on her apron, "Not the same thing Harry."

"It really is. And think of Ron." he said, appealing to her maternal side, "Ollivander says no wand will work as well as a wand that chooses the user. It'd be so much easier for him to do well in class with a wand that's helping him."

He could see her hesitating. He was almost through.

"Oh go on Mrs. Weasley. You can even send me a jumper. That's more than worth a wand!" Harry nailed the final nail into the coffin with that.

"Alright fine you cheeky little boy!" she said with a final humph and pulled out her wand to give it a little wave. A piece of paper came flying and fell into Harry's hand. He unfolded it to see that it was the recipe. Harry gave her a grin and headed back to the sitting room.

After a few more minutes, Mrs. Weasley's loud call came, and the entire Weasley family along with all his friends sat down at the expanded table for some food before leaving for the Alley.

Harry picked up the newspaper and curiously read the headline for the day.

 _GILDEROY LOCKHART will be signing copies of his autobiography MAGICAL ME today 12:30 P.m. to 4:30 P.m._

* * *

 **A video game story without a video game reference? Never! Hope you enjoyed the chapter, even if it was mostly set up. Leave a review if you did. :)**


	23. Book-II:Leap Of Faith

Chapter 3:

As it turned out, Harry thought as he watched the orange haired man borderline harass Hermione's and Dean's parents, Mr. Weasley's liking of muggles bordered on sheer obsession.

"But you're Muggles!" said Mr. Weasley delightedly as they talked in the Gringotts lobby "We must have a drink! What's that you've got there? Is that muggle money? Molly, look!" He pointed excitedly at the wallet in Mr. Granger's hand as they exchanged their pounds for galleons.

Back outside on the marble steps, they all separated. Percy muttered vaguely about needing a new quill, Fred and George had spotted their friend from Hogwarts, Lee Jordan. Mrs. Weasley and Ginny were heading off to a second-hand robe shop. Mr. Weasley was insisting on taking the Grangers and Thomases off to the Leaky Cauldron for a drink.

"We'll all meet at Flourish and Blotts in an hour to buy your schoolbooks," said Mrs. Weasley, setting off with Ginny. "And not _one_ step down Knockturn Alley!" she shouted at the twin's retreating backs.

Harry and his friends decided that they would delegate the tasks of buying all the school stuff amongst themselves.

"Hermione and I will buy the quills and parchment and that sort of stuff for everybody, so cross that off the list," Terry said.

Hermione nodded with a frown, "I do need to find one of those eagle feather quills. The owl ones keep pricking my fingers."

"Well, I can't be of much help. My sister tore up all of my school robes, so I have to buy new ones. I reckon I'll be a while in Madam Malkin's, so I probably won't be able to buy much. I could grab the earmuffs and the herbology gloves for all of us from there though." Dean said sheepishly

"That's alright Dean," Harry said, "Ron and I will handle the potions stuff. What do you reckon we meet at the ice cream parlor after half an hour? Ice cream is on me."

With a whoop of joy from Ron, the group dispersed.

They brought the potion ingredients for everybody before Harry dragged Ron towards Ollivander's wand shop, explaining that Mrs. Weasley had told Harry to buy him a new wand. There was some grumbling, but Ron agreed to the wand when Harry assured him that Mrs. Weasley had given him something of considerable value in return for letting him foot the bill.

"Ah yes, yes. I do remember. All of your family have an unnatural affinity towards unicorn hair," Ollivander said as the very first wand he put in Ron's hand gave a bright shower of sparks and accepted him.

"So wand cores run in families?" Harry asked curiously. He was still just as interested in wandlore as he was in his first year, and after not finding much on it in the library, he had become even more curious.

"Sometimes. There are factors involved that are too complex to get into now," Ollivander grinned, "As I said before Mr. Potter, come talk to me after you finish school. Now off you go. It's a sunny day outside and you shouldn't be spending so much of your time inside."

They paid and headed towards the ice cream parlor, where Hermione had to keep poking holes in Ron's hand with her new really sharp quills to stop him from poking someone's eye out waving his new wand.

"So did you ever find out what was happening to your mail?" Hermione asked in a hushed voice.

Harry nodded. He had argued with himself for hours about what he would and wouldn't tell his friends. He couldn't just tell them nothing, or they would be completely unwarned in case anything happened. But he also couldn't tell them everything. There had to be a middle ground to be found.

"I did, actually," Harry said, instantly capturing all of their attention. "It was a house elf. And it really seemed to be hell bent on stopping me from going to Hogwarts. Thought that stopping all my letters would make me not want to go."

"That's really odd. I've never heard of a house elf doing that. How did you ever find out about it?" Ron asked, his eyebrows knit together in worry.

"He came to me on my birthday and told me. It was actually very disturbing. He seemed to believe that there is something dangerous going on at Hogwarts. Something life-threatening. I mean…if there's something that bad going on, then we should be careful. I don't know what to think about it really. It has had me worried all day" Harry said.

There was a moment of silence while they processed this.

"Harry…" Hermione said, hesitating slightly, "…I think we should tell Professor Dumbledore."

"I think she's right." Terry said agreeing, "It's not just us at risk, it's everyone at school. If anything actually happens to somebody and we don't tell Dumbledore…it'll be on our hands"

"I think so too. Best not to take any risks," Dean added, and Ron nodded as well, to no one's surprise. His sister was going to Hogwarts this year and he no doubts really didn't want to risk her life in any way.

"Fine then. I'll get Hedwig to take me to Hogwarts and talk to Dumbledore" said Harry finally "But make sure not to tell anybody else about it. If word gets out and a panic happens…we will have problems on our hands. Just go about your days as normal and I'll tell you as soon as anything else of note happens."

The group nodded and went back to their ice creams while Harry looked over the list of things he had left to buy. His attention was drawn to the books section by a curious little thing.

 **Second-year students will require:**

 **The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2 by Miranda Goshawk**

 **Break with a Banshee by Gilderoy Lockhart**

 **Gadding with Ghouls by Gilderoy Lockhart**

 **Holidays with Hags by Gilderoy Lockhart**

 **Travels with Trolls by Gilderoy Lockhart**

 **Voyages with Vampires by Gilderoy Lockhart**

 **Wanderings with Werewolves by Gilderoy Lockhart**

 **Year with the Yeti by Gilderoy Lockhart**

Most of the books were written by Gilderoy Lockhart. Wondering why that was, he turned to ask Hermione when suddenly people all over the entire Alley started running towards and crowding at the entrance of the Flourish and Blotts bookstore.

Hermione perked up and suddenly jumped to her feet before grabbing her bag and shot off towards the crowd without a word, leaving the four boys staring at her fast retreating back.

"What's on with her?" Dean asked.

Understanding seemed to dawn on Terry's face as he checked his watch. "It's twelve thirty. Lockhart must have arrived."

"Huh?" was Harry's articulate response.

"She's been going on and on about how she wanted to meet him and get her books signed by him," Terry replied with a sly grin, "I reckon Hermione's got a crush on him."

"Hermione?" Ron asked in disbelief, " _Our_ Hermione? A crush?"

"I know right? It's like a cockroach plush toy, or a teenage McGonagall. Its existence doesn't make sense!"

They watched her disappear into the crowd for a second more before they picked up their bag and headed to the bookstore themselves.

Most of the adults had decided to head back to the Leaky Cauldron, since both the Grangers and the Thomases were getting nervous around the large crowd of rampaging wizards and witches, and true to form, Mr. Weasley had followed.

The crowd seemed to be made up mostly of witches around Mrs. Weasley's age. A harassed-looking wizard stood at the door, saying, "Calmly, please, ladies…Don't push, there…mind the books, now!"

Harry, Dean, Ron, and Terry somehow squeezed inside. A long line wound right to the back of the shop, where Gilderoy Lockhart was signing his books. They each grabbed a copy of The Standard Book of Spells, Grade 2 and sneaked up the line to where Mrs. Weasley was standing with Ginny.

"Oh, there you are, good," said Mrs. Weasley. She sounded breathless and kept patting her hair.

Harry looked at Ginny, who was staring at him with wide eyes. Trying to be friendly, Harry smiled at her. With a yelp, she jumped up and hid behind her mother. Curious about why she was acting oddly like that, Harry used observe on her.

 **Ginevra Weasley**

 **Lv-4**

 **HP-320/320**

 **MP-240/240**

 **Race-Witch**

 **Str-4**

 **Vit-5**

 **Dex-6**

 **Int-7**

 **Wis-2**

 **Luc-3**

 **Ginevra Molly "Ginny" Weasley is a pure-blood witch, the youngest of Arthur and Molly Weasley's seven children, and the first female to be born into the Weasley line for seventh generations. She has grown up hearing stories about Harry Potter and has a crush on him. Due to being the 7th child and the first daughter in 7 generations, she has a bigger than normal magical core.**

 **She thinks that Harry is a great hero for killing the Dark Lord and is incredibly embarrassed to talk to him.**

So that was what was happening? She wasn't just a fan-girl, but she was a fan-girl that had self-esteem issues. Well…Nothing he could do about it. Better to just ignore it.

Just as he was about to wave away the observe screen, a new one popped up.

Ping!

 **Due to observing a person that will agree to a romantic relationship with you, you have unlocked a new feature!**

 **Unlockable Feature #2 unlocked!**

 **Relationship Meter**

 **This is an upgrade to your observe that will show you whether the person you are observing is open to having a romantic relationship with you or not. It will indicate the chance of their ever considering such a relationship with you. If a person is at 100%, they will immediately accept if you propose a relationship. A person at 0% will never do so. A person at 50%...have a shot mate, but you'll probably fail.**

'Well there's a tool and a half' Harry thought, 'I bet it'd be dead useful in avoiding a bunch of real awkward situations within a couple of years.'

He observed Ginny again.

 **Ginevra Weasley Lv-4**

 **(Relationship Meter - 98%)**

 **HP-320/320**

 **MP-240/240**

Harry stared at the Relationship Meter's reading. 98%! That was obsession level crap!

"You can see him now!" Mrs. Weasley said, craning her head towards the back of the shop as Harry picked up the Lockhart books from beside him and paid for them.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Buy all your school supplies!**

 **Reward,**

 **10,000 Exp**

Harry waved the window away, just as Gilderoy Lockhart came slowly into view, seated at a table surrounded by large pictures of his own face, all winking and flashing dazzlingly white teeth at the crowd. He was wearing robes of forget-me-not blue that exactly matched his eyes and his pointed wizard's hat was set at a jaunty angle on his wavy hair.

He observed the man.

 **Gilderoy Lockhart**

 **(Relationship Meter - 0%)**

 **Lv-14**

 **HP-1050/1050**

 **MP-800/800**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-12**

 **Vit-14**

 **Dex-19**

 **Int-15**

 **Wis-9**

 **Luc-27**

 **Gilderoy Lockhart is a half-blood wizard, a former Ravenclaw and a famous wizarding celebrity who has authored many books. He has been hired as the Professor of DADA at Hogwarts. Lockhart never actually did any of the heroic acts he claimed he had done, but instead used his considerable talent in Memory Charms to force the actual people who had done them into forgetting what they did.**

 **He believes that Harry has taken credit for his parent's actions. Hence, he thinks that Harry is a like-minded person who has gotten famous by stealing credit from others. He hasn't noticed Harry yet, but has heard he's in the Alley and wants to meet him today.**

Harry stared. This was…unbelievable. He was in line to meet someone who could be the biggest fraud in the magical world!

But as soon as that thought passed through his head, Gamer's mind suddenly kicked in and a plan started forming in his head. With a grin, he dodged the short, irritable-looking man who was dancing around taking photographs with a large black camera that emitted puffs of purple smoke with every blinding flash.

"Out of the way, there," he snarled at them, moving back to get a better shot. "This is for the Daily Prophet!"

"Big deal," said Ron, rubbing his foot where the photographer had stepped on it.

Gilderoy Lockhart heard him, craned his neck, and looked up. He saw Ron…and then he saw Harry. He stared. Then he leapt to his feet and positively shouted, "It can't be Harry Potter?!"

The crowd parted, whispering excitedly as Lockhart dived forward, seized Harry's arm, and pulled him to the front. The crowd burst into applause.

Harry, feeling a little ticked off, activated his wardstone perk.

 **Wardstone perk activated!**

 **Grants +1000 HP and +1000 MP when activated it at the cost of -25 MP per minute. All wounds are healed. All ailments cured. +20 Str,+20 Vit, +20 Dex.**

His strength sat at a massive 37 now.

With a simple tightening of his hand around Lockhart's, he felt the bones in Lockhart's hands crackle and break. The garishly blond man winced in pain, but held on to Harry's hand, trying to keep smiling as the photographer, who was clicking away madly, wafting thick smoke over his friends and the Weasleys.

"Nice big smile, Harry," said Lockhart, through his own gleaming teeth. "Together, you and I are worth the front page."

"Shame you couldn't memory charm your way into the front page Lockhart," Harry said through his own forced smile. "You need a twelve-year-old for that."

This time, Lockhart lost his smile for a second, his shock too great not to show. Recovering quickly, he slung an arm around his shoulders and clamped him tightly to his side.

"Ladies and gentlemen," he said loudly, waving for quiet. "What an extraordinary moment this is! The perfect moment for me to make a little announcement I've been sitting on for some time!

"When young Harry here stepped into Flourish and Blotts today, he only wanted to buy my autobiography, which I shall be happy to present him now, free of charge," Lockhart said, turning around to pull out books from the shelf behind him, obscuring his face from the applauding crowd.

Under his breath, he said, "Ten minutes, behind the bookshop. Be there. We need to talk about how you know this."

Harry smiled. It felt so good to not hold back on his skills at playing people. With just a few words, he had Lockhart doing exactly what he wanted him to. With his Gamer's Mind at full speed, he could already predict what Lockhart would do. He'd try using a memory charm. When that would be unsuccessful, he'd try threats. Then persuasion, and then bribery. And when even that was unsuccessful, he'd become desperate beyond measure and attempt silencing Harry forever.

He'd fail at every step of course, but Harry would have to be careful to push him just enough so that he didn't become desperate enough for the last measure. But first, he'd have to make himself appear naive enough to make Lockhart underestimate him.

"Do you promise not to memory charm me? And will you sign Mrs. Weasley's books?" Harry asked, and almost felt Lockhart's smugness radiating off of him.

"I promise Harry, and of course I'll sign her books," he said and turned back towards the crowd, his blinding grin back again on his face.

"Of course Harry had no idea," Lockhart said out loud to the crowd at large, giving Harry a little shake, "that he would shortly be getting much, much more than my book, Magical Me . He and his schoolmates will, in fact, be getting the real magical me. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I have great pleasure and pride in announcing that this September, I will be taking up the post of Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry!"

The crowd cheered and clapped and Harry found himself being presented with the entire works of Gilderoy Lockhart. Carrying them over and putting them into Mrs. Weasley's bag, he turned to his friends and said, "It's a bit too crowded in here. I'll wait for you guys outside, alright?"

And upon receiving nods in return, he turned around and made his way out of the shop, shaking the hands of the people who had recognized him. He made his way towards the dark and isolated side alley of the Flourish and Blott's, which lead to the back door of the store. Harry leaned against the wall, and waited for the blond celebrity fraud to come out.

Sharp at ten minutes, the back door slammed opened and Gilderoy Lockhart walked out before closing it behind him and turning to Harry.

"How did you know about the memory charms? And who else knows?" he said, out of breath, and looking deeply frazzled.

"It was easy actually. Too many inconsistencies, too many plot holes in the books…I grew curious. But why did you lie about all that you did in your books? Why not just publish your works under fiction? Or as a chronicler? You'd still have made good money," Harry said, trying to remain really vague as he tried to get information out of the blond man.

That seemed to really incense Lockhart.

"Fiction!? My dear boy, do use your common sense. My books wouldn't have sold half as well if people didn't think I'd done all those things. And chronicling! Bah! No one wants to read about some ugly old Armenian warlock, even if he did save a village from werewolves. He'd look dreadful on the front cover. No dress sense at all. And the witch who banished the Bandon Banshee had a harelip. I mean, come on!"

"So you've just been taking credit for what a bunch of other people have done?" said Harry incredulously.

"Harry, Harry," said Lockhart, shaking his head impatiently, "It's not nearly as simple as that. There was work involved. I had to track these people down. Ask them exactly how they managed to do what they did. Then I had to put a Memory Charm on them so they wouldn't remember doing it. If there's one thing I pride myself on, it's my Memory Charms. And then I've got to write the entire thing. No, it's been a lot of work, Harry. It's not all book signings and publicity photos, you know. You want fame, you have to be prepared for a long hard slog. Except you of course."

"What do you mean 'except me'?" Harry said with a frown.

"I mean look at you," Lockhart said, waving his hands at him, "Your parents somehow off the Dark Lord and you get all the credit. You don't even have to work for your fame. Others do it for you. You have achieved a level of fame and success that is unprecedented, and all without lifting an actual finger. What I'd do to have fame like that."

Harry stared at the blond man for a second before shrugging, "Well, finally someone who agrees with me on the fact that my mum was the one who saved me. Besides, I'd give up the fame any day of the week. I hate all the staring that comes with it."

"Then I'll have to convince you otherwise someday else. You don't hate the stares Harry, you learn to revel in them," Lockhart pulled out his wand and leveled it at Harry, its point so close to Harry's eyes that they crossed as he looked at the wand. "But for now, I'm awfully sorry, Harry, but I'll have to put a Memory Charm on you. Can't have you blabbing my secrets all over the place. I'd never sell another book. _Obliviate._ "

 **Memory spell attack averted!**

Harry raised a single eyebrow, not even pretending to have fallen under the spell. "You really shouldn't have done that"

Lockhart stood there, flabbergasted, "Bu-But…how?"

"That's none of your concern buddy," Harry said, "What _is_ your concern though, is how you'll stop me from telling about your little fraud scheme to the DMLE."

Lockhart's expression grew fearful, "You can't prove anything. They won't believe a kid's words against mine. Not even Harry Potter's!"

"See Gilly…Can I call you Gilly? I think I'll call you Gilly…That's where you're wrong. I don't _need_ to prove anything. I may not have read your fiction, but I know that you detailed every step of the so-called'your journey' in your books. And once the DMLE know about your memory charms, all they have to do is follow the very same steps you outlined in your books, and all your victims would eventually be found. _You've_ aimed the cannons at yourself Gilly. All I need to do, is light the spark."

The man started sweating. His target was becoming desperate, Harry thought, and if he wanted to get what he wanted, he'd have to strike now.

"Of course," Harry said casually, "Said spark will never be lit if you do as I say."

Lockhart's eyes seemed to brighten and grow suspicious at the same time. "What is it?"

"Dark Force Defence League member, Order of Merlin, and so many other awards and position. You're not a man without connections in the world of the pureblood wizarding community."

Lockhart desperately nodded.

"There have been rumors about a plot at Hogwarts, potentially a life-threatening one. Now I go to school at Hogwarts, and so do many people I care about. What I want you to do, is to put out your feelers. See what you can find out something about anything like that and tell me about it. Of course, remember to keep my name out of it. If you do as I say, your secret will stay safe with me."

"Fine! Fine! That's reasonable! I'll do it," Lockhart said quickly. "But you have to let me teach at Hogwarts."

"Absolutely not! I'm not compromising the education of my schoolmates!" Harry said fiercely.

"It'd take Dumbledore a few months to find a new Professor anyways! And if I back out now then the public will be angry and I won't be able to do anything you want. Just a few months. Nothing more than Halloween." Lockhart implored.

"Fine," Harry gave in, "But you'll send compensations to the families of all those you've mugged off. Goodness knows you've earned enough money to pay them back for stealing their work," Lockhart opened his mouth to object, and Harry cut him off "This is non-negotiable. You'll get the goblins to send them the money, and you'll send me the receipts."

"Fine," Lockhart grumbled.

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up twice due to extreme use!**

 **Blackmailing Lv- 3 (30%)**

 **This is your ability to make another person do something you want by expressly using some sort of leverage against them. The higher the level, the more chance of success!**

 **(14 + Lv of Bullshitting)% chance of success, less based on how extreme the demand is.**

"Good," Harry said, itching to ask something he'd been wanting to ask since he'd laid eyes on Lockhart, "And now that the unpleasantness is out of the way, could you tell me exactly how you keep your hair to stay down? I have a problem with that and I honestly don't know what to do."

Lockhart brightened and started rattling off names of potions and magical hair taming combs that would be helpful, even promising Harry to send him some of his patent hair care products and a book called _How To Be Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and look Good Doing It._

One part of Harry's brain took note of all that Lockhart was saying. The hair on the back of his head that always stuck up was on his list of mortal enemies, right under Voldemort, and this was the key to conquer it. Besides, his eventual goals were in politics and appearance played a huge role in that.

Another part of his brain celebrated at successfully using Lockhart's fickle nature against him. If he allowed Lockhart to view him as some sort of apprentice in the so-called art of being a celebrity, then he'd stop being a threat in his eyes. Lockhart may be a fraud and a liar, but he was somebody who could help Harry, and that was more important than anything.

Harry sent an Observe at Lockhart and looked at his opinion of him.

 **He is slightly afraid of Harry, but is excited at having someone he can finally share his secret and talk freely with.**

Bolstered by his progress with acquiring Lockhart as a potential friendly, Harry closed the observe window and was about to reply to something Lockhart said about the advantages of having fan-girls, when a missile of red hair barraged into the dark alleyway, and not being able to see clearly in the dark, slammed right into Harry and sent him straight down to the cobbled street, landing right on top of him.

The redhead rubbed her head as she sat up and looked around her. She caught sight of a wide-eyed Gilderoy Lockhart.

"EEEP!"

And then she turned her head and saw who she'd landed on top of.

"EEEEEEP!" she let out before quickly jumping onto her feet and looking at Harry.

"Mum'sbeenlookingforyou!" she rattled off in a shriller voice than Harry thought humanly possible, and shot back out towards the alley.

"Who was that?" Lockhart asked, looking at the small mouth of the alleyway where the missile of chaos and destruction had come from.

"Gi…Ginny Weasley…" Harry replied while slowly climbing to his feet, still thrown off. "I think she has a crush on me…"

"Harry," the blond man said, patting his back, "Nice. Getting into the sack early."

"I wasn't born with enough middle fingers to let you know how I feel about you."

* * *

The next day, Harry was preparing to head to Hogwarts to let the Headmaster know as much as he could about Malfoy's plan.

His deep rooted habit of not trusting any adults with information was objecting strongly to this course of action, but he agreed with Terry. If anything happened to some student and he didn't tell Dumbledore, then their suffering would be on his hands.

A small pop came from the other side of the room. Harry turned to see what it was, looking away from the cushions he was arranging for Hedwig. Her burning day was only two days away now, and her pains were growing.

It was Dobby the house elf. After Harry had freed him, Dobby had given Harry the address to an abandoned house that Harry could owl him at. The little elf didn't live in that abandoned house of course, but he did promise Harry that he would go there every day to check if he had gotten any letters. Today, he had found one.

"Dobby has come Harry Potter." the elf said in his squeaky voice, with his ears flapping as he ran up and shook Harry's hand vigorously. "How can Dobby help sir?"

"Thank you for coming Dobby." Harry said with a smile, "How have you been doing? Have you found a place to stay?"

The elf almost nodded his head off. "Dobby has sir. Dobby is living with a band of homeless elves now. Nobody is willing to pay a house elf, so work is being hard to find. But Dobby is free sir, and that is all that matters."

Harry looked at Dobby sadly before an idea came to his head. Surely the headmaster would be open to it. And Harry himself could easily foot the bill.

"Dobby, do you reckon you would be open to working at Hogwarts? I mean, there's the world's largest concentration of elves there, so you won't have any problem finding company. And I'm sure I could convince the headmaster to hire you as a paid help."

The house elf's huge eyes widened, "Harry Potter sir would do that for Dobby!"

"Of course I would," Harry said with a smile, "But I need a favor from you in return Dobby. And it's a pretty big one."

"Anything sir," Dobby said with absolute certainty.

"I need you to tell the Headmaster anything you know about the plan that Lucius had," Seeing the elf hesitate, Harry quickly added, "I'll understand if you don't want to, but I'll have to tell him all about it anyway, and having you there would help immensely in foiling Lucius's plot."

He hesitated a second more before he nodded, the prospect of harming his former master's plans too tempting to pass up on.

The elf glanced at Hedwig, who was in poor shape and said, "Dobby will take Harry Potter sir to Hogwarts. Little Miss Hedwig should be resting sir."

Harry smiled at him. He quickly put a few more chocolates into Hedwig's bowl for her burning day pains before telling her to rest and grabbing on to Dobby's hand.

"To Hogwarts if you will Dobby."

There was a distinct pop, and Harry disappeared from his bedroom in the apartment and reappeared right in front of the Headmaster's office in Hogwarts and promptly stumbled and smacked right onto the ground. While Dobby was able to make the apparition painless, elf apparition was _intensely_ disorienting to Harry.

Pushing himself to his feet and dusting himself off, Harry reassured Dobby that he was fine, and looked at the gargoyle, a little bit perplexed at how to get past it. He couldn't just pop in using an ID if he wanted his Gamer abilities to stay secret.

'Observe' he thought after a few seconds of deliberation.

Ping!

 **A skill has leveled up due to repeated use!**

 **Observe Lv-7 (10%)**

 **By Observing a target one will get information about said object**

 **-Max HP,MP, stats, detailed info, their emotions and will give their opinion of you.**

Waving away the level up screen, Harry read the description.

 **Headmaster's Office Gargoyle**

 **The Headmaster's tower requires a Password from anyone who wishes to gain entry to the room. This password is given to this large and ugly stone gargoyle which rarely talks but is capable of doing so.**

 **Password - Lemon Drops**

Harry could have whooped with joy! His Observe was finally at the level where he could learn passwords just by observing!

"Lemon Drops," Harry said, and the gargoyle jumped to the side, revealing a slowly ascending circular staircase.

"Come on," Harry told Dobby, who was staring at the staircase with such dread that it looked as if he was about to turn and run.

But he didn't run. With a small gulp, he followed Harry.

Harry knocked on the oaken door at the end of the staircase, and a voice came from inside, "Come in Harry!"

As he opened the door and stepped into the slightly familiar office, his eyes reflexively went to the throne-like chair behind the claw-footed desk where the headmaster sat the last time he had visited this office.

It was empty.

"Quite a surprise seeing you here today! And who is your little friend over there?"

Harry looked at the side of the room where, in a duvet near the window that overlooked the Quidditch field, sat the old headmaster sat with a tome in his lap, looking at Harry with twinkling eyes and a smile.

"Good morning Professor," Harry said, "This is Dobby. He, until very recently used to work for the Malfoy family, and he has told me about something very disturbing about the school a few days ago."

Professor Dumbledore's smile faded a bit at the mention of Malfoy.

"And what would that be Harry?" he asked, putting down the tome and waving his wand to conjure some seats for them, which they both took, in Dobby's case with some very vocal gratitude.

"On the day of my birthday, I was walking in a park in London. There, I found Dobby spying nearby, and tried to catch him using my Cloak. Dobby got shocked and accidentally teleported me to the Malfoy Manor, where he told me that Malfoy had some plan to unleash something dangerous at Hogwarts. As for the details, I think you should ask Dobby" Harry said, giving Dobby a small encouraging smile, "He will be able to tell you a lot more than I can."

Professor Dumbledore's face was somber as he turned to Dobby and asked, "Dobby? Will you please tell me all you can?"

Dobby looked at Harry, who nodded encouragingly, and then said, "Dobby doesn't know much Professor Dumbledore sir…but once Dobby had heard bad master…"

And then he proceeded to tell them both about all that he knew of the plan. A lot of the stuff he said even Harry didn't know. There was the question of how he had found out about it, which Professor Dumbledore asked. That question hadn't even crossed Harry's mind, since it seemed so obvious at the time he'd been talking to Dobby.

Turned out, Dobby had never seen another accomplice to Lucius, but he _had_ heard Lucius mutter suspicious sounding phrases to himself in private. Phrases like 'Mudbloods will all be burned out of Hogwarts' and 'Dark Lord's plan against Potter…no better test'. That was what had led Dobby to come after Harry and try to protect him.

The second phrase had sent off all sort of alarms in Harry's head.

Apparently, it set off alarms in Professor Dumbledore's head too, since Harry immediately noticed his eyes to start twinkling madly. He was using Legilimency on the house elf.

It was a few more moments before Dobby stopped talking and Professor Dumbledore's Legilimency probe ceased. They all sat there for a moment in silence, before Harry remembered his promise to the house elf.

"Erm…Professor? There's something else. Dobby is actually a free elf now, so I was wondering if he could work as some sort of paid help here at Hogwarts."

The long-bearded man remained unfazed at the sudden change of subject as he peered at Dobby over his half-moon glasses before smiling "Of course. We'll discuss the conditions of your employment later. How about you head to the kitchens and meet with all the other elves that are working here. I'm sure they'd appreciate a helping hand."

There were a few more hugs, tears, and exclamations of gratitude from Dobby before he bowed low to both the wizards in the room and popped out with a snap of his fingers.

Professor Dumbledore immediately met Harry's eyes with a stern look as soon as the elf disappeared. "You did not tell me the whole truth, Harry."

"I know sir," Harry replied calmly, "But you are the head of the wizarding court of law Professor. You'll forgive me if I didn't openly confess it to you."

"But surely you would have realized that I would have found out about it from the young elf's mind. You're smart enough for that. And why did you even bring him along? Without him, I would have remained perfectly ignorant about you physically threatening and obliviating Lucius" Professor Dumbledore's voice wasn't disapproving, only curious.

"Without Dobby," Harry replied calmly, "You wouldn't have seen Lucius Malfoy himself admit that he'd erased his _own memory_ for this. Now you have and you know why I believe that whatever plot he's set up is dangerous. Without Dobby, you would have dismissed my warnings. _With_ him, you're still listening."

The Headmaster peered at Harry over his half-moon glasses for a few more moments before he opened his mouth to speak again. "If I were to assure you, Harry, that I will handle this, would you leave this entire situation alone and forget all about it?"

"Probably not. I'm a nosy kind of person."

The headmaster stared at him before a small knowing smile spread across his face. "Very well," he said, before pulling out his wand and giving it a wave.

Harry watched as a folder on his claw-footed table gained a life of its own, somersaulted off of the table and marched over to where they were sitting. Dumbledore picked it up and opened it.

"Let's see. Yes. Not this. Not this…this one was just pointless…there it is!" Professor Dumbledore said before he pulled out a single sheet of parchment and handed it to Harry.

The topmost line read in a fancy script, " _Malignant Artifact Restriction Treaty"_

"That treaty was passed in the Wizengamot in the middle of last year." Professor Dumbledore said, "And it requires all pureblood families to hand over all dark artifacts they own or face serious penalties."

Harry frowned "I'm sorry sir, but what's this got to do with Malfoy's plan?"

The Headmaster took the paper back from Harry. "Quite a lot Harry. Lucius Malfoy was one of the people who _denied_ owning any dark artifacts despite to the best of my knowledge having quite a large number of them in his collection. And _that_ is an important piece of the puzzle."

"I…I'm afraid I still don't understand sir."

The Professor's eyes gleamed, and Harry's mind oddly conjured up an image of Sherlock Holmes explaining his reasoning to Doctor Watson.

"You will soon Harry. But bear with an old man for a second. I have no doubt that Lucius expected to pay off the people that would have come to inspect his house for the artifacts, which is why he no doubt had a small fit when he realized that I had appointed his nemesis Arthur Weasley to head the Inspector team. He saved himself from legal repercussions by selling off his dark artifacts, but he no doubt wanted revenge. While he can make Arthur's life at the Ministry very difficult, but I…I am mostly untouchable to him. If he wanted revenge from me, he'd strike me where he can hurt me the most. My school."

Something clicked in Harry's mind, and he made the connection that the Headmaster had made.

"You think he's trying to get at you _and_ test me in some way by attacking Hogwarts. He's trying to take out 2 birds with one stone."

"Indeed," the Headmaster said, "I'd suspected before today that there might be a chance that he would lash out at the school out of anger towards me, which is why I'd hired Gilderoy Lockhart. And after today, it's confirmed that he did indeed lash out, although for more reasons than I suspected."

Harry's eyebrows flew into his hairline. "Wait a minute. You hired…Lockhart…as protection? You do know that-"

"That his works of literature contain more fiction than he likes to advertise?" the Professor interrupted pulling out a packet of lemon drops from his pockets, "Yes. Of course, I know."

"So why would you hire him! Why not hire an actual Auror or something?"

"I thought you would understand Harry," Dumbledore replied disapprovingly, "Reputations matter, and Lockhart has a formidable one. More formidable than any Auror in the Ministry's arsenal. If whatever plan Lucius has put in place has any other wizard or witch involved in it and that person has ever heard of Lockhart, they will be hesitant to make an actual move out of fear either of me or Gilderoy. It will buy us time. Once I find and counter whatever plan Lucius has put in place, and I promise you that Gilderoy will not stay for a second longer than necessary after that."

Harry had no reply to that, but his opinion of Dumbledore went up a bit. Despite his flaws, the man definitely thought well ahead of his enemies.

Sitting across from him, Dumbledore tossed a lemon drop into the air and tried to catch it with his mouth, but it instead landed on his eye and stumbled to the floor, from where he picked it up and popped it into his mouth.

Harry's newly gained respect for Dumbledore disappeared in a poof.

"I think I should be going Professor," Harry said, getting up from his seat "I'll be on the lookout for anything suspicious and I'll be sure to let you know if anything turns up. I really should get to the kitchens if I want to get Dobby to take me back."

"Oh, no need for that Harry. Fawkes will be returning from the forest soon now. I'm sure he'd be glad to drop you off at your house."

"Oh…okay. Thank you for that," said Harry, sitting back down.

"Think nothing of it. So has young Hedwig been doing well?" Professor Dumbledore asked.

"Hmm? Oh. Yes, she's good. A bit down now, since her burning day is close, but she's good."

The silence stretched again as they sipped on the teas that the Professor and summoned.

Suddenly, a mischievous smile spread over Professor Dumbledore's face as he remembered something. "Harry…Nicholas and Perenelle wanted me to suggest to you that you should apply for the Quidditch team."

"What!" Harry said, shocked to full attention "No! Why would they even think that?!"

"Why not? Barring the incident at your first flying class, Madam Hooch tells me that you've been the best flyer of your year. Quidditch seems like a natural path from that."

"No, it doesn't! It's just that I don't really enjoy the game. It makes no sense to me. And do they really want me to slack in my studies? I still can't think of why they'd want me going into _Quidditch_ of all things."

"Oh, Perenelle kept spewing some talk about you needing to socialize more," the Professor said, "But what I believe is that they think that playing Quidditch will make you feel closer to your father, who was a Quidditch player as well. Gryffindor Chaser if memory serves right."

Harry lost all his indignation and quietened down.

He let that sink in for a moment before he quietly replied, "I love my parents, but I'm not going to be emulating them. I'm a different person with different likes and dislikes than them. I'd like to think that if they'd lived, they'd have wanted me to be my own person."

 **Due to making a wise decision, you have gained +1 Wis!**

"Indeed they would have," the Professor said, "But Perenelle's reason wasn't invalid too. It is one of the common pitfalls of being a Ravenclaw to be socially restricted at the price of academic excellence. Studying is quite fine, but you should meet more with people your age other than your few friends. And Quidditch is a great way to do that."

Harry's left eye started twitching.

All these people singing the praise of Quidditch was starting to get to him. Oh what would he do to knock Quidditch right off its pedestal, Harry thought.

And suddenly, it struck him. He _could_ do something.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Take a personal challenge and knock Quidditch out of its spot as Hogwart's favorite game!**

 **Reward,**

 **60,000 Exp**

 **Failure,**

 **Universal ridicule**

 **Death by the hands of rabid Quidditch fans. Literally. They will bite you. And then you'll get rabies.**

 **YES/NO?**

'Oh hell yeah.'

Harry pressed yes and turned to the headmaster. If he could get the old professor on board with this, then it would definitely go a long way towards being a sure-fire success.

"Professor, I'm really not interested in Quidditch. _But_ I want to do something. It's a little plan I've had in the back of my head for a while. It'll involve a lot of research and application of studies, but I will definitely meet a lot of people, so Nick and Perry will be satisfied. I want to do this as a project to start off early in Arithmancy and Runes, but I'll need your help to start working on it, sir," Harry said.

"That sounds very interesting. What do you have in mind?" Professor Dumbledore asked, looking intrigued.

Harry opened and positioned his inventory so that the required slot lay inside his pocket, and put his hand in his pocket to pull the necessary item before he handed it to the headmaster without a word.

The old man read at the cover of the book.

 _RPG game designer's manual_

"I don't want to play their game. I want to make my own."

* * *

A girl, barely twelve of age, walked along the footpath of the road that led to the Museum of London on one August evening. She was not notable in any way, just another amongst the thousands of absolutely normal people that would pass through the street on that very same day.

Except that she wasn't normal. Not by a long shot.

She turned left and walked for a few more minutes before crossing the road along a zebra crossing. Walking straight ahead for a few more meters, she reached her destination.

Looking up, she saw the sign above the building.

 _Finchley Safe Deposit Vault Ltd._

She pushed the door open and stepped inside. There were no customers inside, only a single pot-bellied man half asleep at the reception desk.

She walked over to the reception and waved her hand. The man slumped in his seat, unconscious. She had considered killing the obese little waste of space momentarily, but pulling out her wand was too much effort to consider.

The girl walked around the reception desk and over to the door that led to the inner vault. Letting herself into the vault chamber, she undid all the locks to the metal door leading into the room that held all the safe deposit boxes.

All the walls of the room were filled with numbered deposit boxes, and a table standing in the middle of the room. Walking in, she counted her way up to Box #267V and waved her hand, muttering " _Alohamora_ " under her breath.

The lock clicked open and the girl pulled out the box from inside it, setting it on the table before opening the lid of the box and revealing it contents.

There were four glass vials inside the box, each filled to the brim with silvery hair like wisps that any wizard that ever owned a pensieve would recognize as physical copies of memories. Each vial had a label on it.

 _1943-1950_

 _1951-1960_

 _1961-1970_

 _1971-1980_

A perfect back-up copy of memories, completely and meticulously stored every single decade by a very paranoid man…just in case…

Without any hesitation, the girl started picking up the vials one by one and downing them down her throat. She was shaking by the time she reached the fourth vial, and the moment she downed it, she crumpled to the floor, her eyes squeezed shut, moaning in pain as her brain was overloaded with memories and thoughts and ideas and visions to its very breaking point.

It was a half an hour before she reopened her eyes, and when she did, the red eyes glowed with an intensity that wasn't in them before.

It wasn't just Tom Riddle in those eyes anymore. It was Lord Voldemort.

* * *

 **So…lots of people have been asking me about pairings. This is NOT a romance focused story, but I figured I should address it. As in the story's description, the pairings will involve Harry, Ginny, and Hermione, but not all three at the same time. One relationship will happen first, and then the next. I won't disclose which one comes first and breaks up, but rest assured, I have some good stuff planned for the future.**

 **MOST IMPORTANTLY, this is just initial planning. It is very much subject to change. I avoided talking about pairings so far because some people tend to get a bit…rabid about it. Let me know your thoughts about this and the chapter in a review.**


	24. Book-II:Duty Above All

Chapter 4:

Harry had worked for hours with that RPG manual, devising a proper progression system to fit the ideas he had for his new game before he shelved it until he reached the school. He needed help from someone who had actual experience with magic based games. He needed Ron and Terry.

For now, he was sitting on his bed was sifting through his inventory, trying to separate out and categorize all the boxes. He'd already arranged all his food, clothes, books and the assorted weapons he had in his ownership and was moving towards the miscellaneous items.

While putting in the turban of glory in the clothes section, something suddenly caught his eye. A small piece of paper, one he hadn't thought about for months now.

Pulling it out, he read it.

 _Help shall always be provided at Hogwarts to those who ask for it._

 _Look for the most maleficent of the fae_

He was pretty sure that the maleficent fae was Morgana Le Fay. And that somehow this piece of paper was supposed to be some sort of clue that would lead to a path that'd lead to some sort of fabled knowledge and power.

Another thing that was worrying him was why he hadn't received a quest for this entire thing yet. It really seemed like something was off.

Harry eyed the paper as something crossed his mind.

Surely not…surely he wasn't dumb enough to forget such a simple thing to do…

"Observe," he said.

 **Founders Clue #1!**

 **Memory Page (1/4)**

 **A piece of paper capable of showing the user a pre programmed memory once the paper's password is written on it. This particular memory page was created 982 AD.**

 **Password: Morgana**

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Founder's Quest. Find all the Founder's Clues and piece them together.**

 **Rewards,**

 **+40 stat points**

 **1,000,000 Exp**

 **?**

 **?**

 **?**

 **Failure,**

 **Death**

 **Apocalypse**

 **YES/NO?**

It looked like the game needed an Observe the paper to trigger the quest, Harry thought, reprimanding himself for not having observed the paper earlier.

His eyes widened as he read the rewards and the failures. Apocalypse!? Was this _that_ serious!? Accepting the quest, Harry swiped away the quest window and looked at the Observe. His eyebrows rose as he read what it actually was.

A memory page!

That was one artifact recipe he needed to get his hands on. If he could make and sell books made out of this paper with memories of Hogwarts classes in them, he could revolutionize wizarding education. He could create the first Magical Distance Learning Program! Making a mental note of this amongst the list of most awesome ideas he had, Harry focused back on the paper. It made sense that the password was Morgana. The underlined part was a clue to the password of the paper.

Wondering what memories could be held in this piece of the ancient past, Harry picked up the quill and in a neat handwriting, wrote down the password.

 _Morgana_

The page seemed to absorb the words before the ink rose back to the surface and formed a circle about as wide as his hand. It seemed to be glowing with an odd sort of flickering silvery blue light.

His hands trembling slightly, Harry raised his hand and placed a single finger on the circle, and before he knew what was happening, he was tilting forward, the circle was widening, he felt his body leave his bed, and he was pitched headfirst through the opening in the paper, into a whirl of color and shadow.

He felt his feet hit solid ground, and stood, shaking slightly, as the blurred shapes around him came suddenly into focus.

He immediately knew where he was. This corridor was the familiar seventh-floor corridor in which he had found the Room of Requirement. And yet it was not so at the same time. The bricks looked new, and the magical sentience that Hogwarts had always radiated was notably absent. It was almost eerie.

Harry looked around the corridor. This was Hogwarts as the founders had known it. At the time of her conception. He, Harry, was little more than a phantom in this memory.

Noticing movement through the corner of his eye, Harry turned and saw a woman, looking older than even Dumbledore, leaning heavily on her staff as she limped towards the spot on the wall where he knew the Room of Requirement was hidden.

Reaching the spot, she stared at the wall for a split second before a pitch black door appeared. Harry hurried to follow her as she slipped in through the door.

Pushing himself in through the door, Harry looked around the inside of the room. It had taken the form of a well-lit hall, bare of any furniture except the single rectangular table that lay in the middle. Two small figures, covered with a white sheet, lay on it.

Behind the table, standing in a regal flowing blue dress, was the familiar visage of Rowena Ravenclaw. Curious about what was going on, Harry moved towards a corner of the room to wait and watch.

"Why did you summon me?" the old woman asked, positioning herself across the table from Ravenclaw. Harry's Gamer's mind was swift to note her stiff shoulders. She did not want to be here.

Ravenclaw's face was a cold mask of pure logic, as the famous enchanted diadem, she wore glinted in the firelight. Harry wondered for a second if this was how he looked while under Gamer's Mind's influence.

She opened her mouth to speak, "The Celts have kept their assault on us relentless. Our wards will not stand strong for much longer. They cover too big an area, and need more magic than we can provide."

"So this is what you have come to? Losing to a bunch of half-trained mediocre magic weavers." the old woman said, her voice mocking.

Ravenclaw remained unfazed, not even acknowledging the taunt as she continued speaking, "Godric and Salazar grow weary, and even Helga is not unfazed anymore. Our supplies are diminishing. Our people here in the castle now number in hundreds, and news has arrived that the Celts have killed all the others. The people in this castle…we are the last of our kind. And Hogwarts…Hogwarts is our last stand.

There was a quiet moment following that statement, during which Harry tried to wrap his mind around the seriousness of the situation. The Celtic magicals had somehow taken it upon themselves to commit genocide against what looked like all Anglo-Roman magicals. And whatever portion of the Anglo-Romans had survived, was now at Hogwarts fighting for their survival.

Harry wondered how he had never heard or read of this war. After a few seconds, he decided to blame it on Binns and refocus on the conversation.

The old woman had a somber expression on her face as she broke the silence, "So what now? What do you want from me? I will not bring my own people into this. While you are important to me, my people's survival is more so."

"That is not what I am asking for Morgana. I have no wish to bring the fae into this war. I only want your advice."

Harry's eyes widened. Morgana! This was Morgana Le Fay!

The old woman looked at Ravenclaw searchingly, before she seemed to find what she was looking for. "Then you will have it. What do you wish my assistance for?"

"Our last protection," Ravenclaw said as she grabbed hold of a corner of the sheet covering the figures on her table and pulled it off. Harry moved closer to get a better look, and once he saw what it was, he gasped.

Lying on the table, pale as the waning moon, were prone forms of two babies.

But they were no normal babies. They looked diseased. Their skin was shriveled and seemed to hug their skeletons. Harry could barely tell that one was a boy and the other a girl.

'What is happening here?' Harry wondered, slightly horrified.

"What have you done?" Morgana asked in a whisper. Her voice wavered, and she couldn't seem to look away from the shriveled up babies. She seemed to know exactly what was going on. "You promised me that you would never go down this path. Performing Dark Arts experiments upon human beings is dangerous by and in itself, but to do it on children…"

"I have a duty to protect my people. These are desperate times Morgana…and desperate times call for desperate measures," Ravenclaw said by the way of an explanation.

Morgana's eyes flickered to the diadem on Ravenclaw's head before she spoke, "Fine. Tell me what you have done to them, and what you intend to do next."

"A week ago, one of the pure bred witches in the castle gave birth to these two babies. I stole them and made her believe that she birthed stillborn babies. I did so with the intention to create a new breed of magical creature to protect us and destroy the Celts. I modified their body and their magic using various Paras Rituals and then I caged their magic into their core," she said, "All of it."

Morgana shook her head "A magical body needs magic flowing throughout the body to stay alive Rowena. If you cage all their magic in their cores then-"

"I know. Their bodies will never mature or heal properly and will forever be shriveled husks. But their magic…it will be concentrated, different and more powerful than any wizard's. With these creatures under our command, we will destroy our enemies. We will emerge victoriously."

Morgana stared at Ravenclaw for a second before she said anything. "How you will keep this…new breed from turning against us?"

"That is what I need your assistance for. There is no one who knows blood magic better than you. With an enslavement enchantment on their bloodline, they-"

"Enslavement magic wears off," Morgana interrupted "They will rebel sooner or later. And with their magic as strong as you say it is, they will triumph above us."

"Then what do you suggest I do?" Ravenclaw asked as she walked around the table and stood beside Morgana

" _Pain,_ " Morgana said, her voice cold, "Enchant them to stay _forever_ under pain. Make it so that their only respite from that pain would be whenever they carry out a wizard or witch's command."

"Yes…" Ravenclaw mused as Harry watched horrified, "If work and servitude is the only respite from pain they ever have, then they will seek to obey our kind. They won't need an enslavement enchantment. They will become our slaves willingly."

"Furthermore," Morgana said, "A Permanent Pain Curse is much simpler than an enslavement enchantment. It can be integrated into their very essence. All _you_ will have to do is perform a Ritual of Sacrifice, and sacrifice one very powerful magical creature in exchange for the creation of another…but you knew that already didn't you?"

Ravenclaw's face remained impassive as she swiftly pulled out a long ritual knife from above her sleeve and in one fluid movement, slunk it into Morgana's side.

"I did."

Harry screamed and jumped forward, trying to stop her before he remembered that he was in a memory and could not interfere. He suddenly looked down and noticed that runic circles and shapes had appeared on the floor and were coalescing into a ritual circle under the two women, who had sunk to the floor, one in the arms of the other.

Morgana stared at Ravenclaw's face as she lay in her arms, and then towards her diadem, not even glancing towards the knife that was sticking out of her abdomen, "Do you not feel the slightest bit of remorse through the walls of that diadem you've built? Of sorrow? That you are taking my life?"

The blood that had started pooling on the floor from Morgana's wound gained a life of its own as it flowed upwards along the side of the table and pooled around the two shriveled babies, changing their form slowly into something familiar to Harry. Harry's Gamer's Mind was making the connections. He was starting to slowly but surely realize what was happening.

Ravenclaw moved a strand of silvery hair and tucked it behind Morgana's ears, "You misunderstand. It is true I choose not to feel anything. But should I open my mind to my emotions…it would break me. Right now, my people need my help, and with this diadem, I am able to put emotions to rest and prioritize logic…I can do what is necessary. You mistake my choice not to feel as a reflection of me not caring. Well, I assure you, the truth…is precisely the opposite."

There was another moment of silence.

"Very well then…I believe this is goodbye daughter."

"So it is, mother," And despite the diadem's shields, Harry saw a tear slide down Ravenclaw's cheeks.

"You haven't called me that in so long."

"I know," she said, and there was no reply.

The memory exploded into a blast of color and dissolved into silvery strands, just as a mighty fog swept into the memory, and filled everything around Harry.

A voice-Rowena Ravenclaw's voice echoed in his ears. "My lesson to you, seeker of our paths, is this. Duty above all else, no matter what the cost."

The fog dissolved in a whirl of color and darkness, and Harry felt himself falling. With a crash, he fell back into his bed in his room.

His body felt drained, and yet, his mind somehow seemed to be moving at light speeds, trying to comprehend just what he had witnessed and what it meant.

He was pretty sure that he had just witnessed the creation of the house elves.

This changed everything. House elves weren't the benignly treated servants as the books painted them to be. They were slaves, in all its literal meaning. They were _created_ slaves and then forced to serve their master or live constantly in pain.

Pushing past the horror of the entire thing, Harry analyzed the situation. There was something that wasn't making sense.

Dobby.

He shouldn't have been able to disobey and go against Lucius Malfoy, ever.

Unless, Harry's Gamer's Mind thought, 'integrating into the essence' was more literal than he had initially thought. If Ravenclaw had somehow forced the Permanent Pain Curse into the genes of the house elf species, then she would have made it a dominant gene.

And much like any other form of genes, very rarely, the recessive trait would pop up, and elves like Dobby would be born. Elves in whom the Pain magic would still be present, but it would be weaker, less all-consuming…still binding them to their masters, but with bonds weaker than their dominant gene bearing brethren.

That was why he had been able to heal the Slave Bond status, Harry realized. It wasn't some sort of Ancient magical spell he had healed.

It was a genetic disorder.

And Ravenclaw's greatest creation…was the house elf.

* * *

It had taken Harry an entire day of musing and self-conflicted thinking in an ID before he had come to terms with the fact that his favorite founder and one of the very few people he idolized had actually tortured and enslaved an entire species. And killed her own mother.

He had come to the conclusion that he really needed to get out of the habit of envisioning people as perfect. He also added the removal of that pain curse from the house elves into his future plans. He couldn't in good conscience let an entire species live in forced servitude. The least he could do is give them the right to choose their future. As a Ravenclaw, it was only right that he fix his founder's mistakes.

"ID Escape," he muttered and reappeared in his bedroom in the real world.

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up due to repeated use!**

 **ID Create, Lv-6 (40%)**

 **Used to create Instant Dungeons. Higher the level, stronger the dungeon.**

 **Current list-**

 **Empty Dungeon- no monsters.**

 **Monster Dungeon- Zombies**

Harry frowned as he waved the screen away. It had been quite a while since his ID skills had leveled up. Almost half a year.

Wondering if this was because of the fact that he had not fully completed the Zombie dungeon, Harry decided that tonight was going to be the night he fully finished the zombie dungeon.

Opening his room's door, Harry quickly ran to the dining table, where Nicholas and Perenelle were waiting for him.

"Sorry for being late," he said as he sat down and started wolfing down the chicken curry.

"I haven't seen you two today," he said in between bites, remembering that the Flamels had gone off somewhere today, "Where have you been? Out on a date?"

"No," Nicholas said flatly, "We were searching for books on new sex positions. Anal is getting a bit boring"

Harry spewed his entire mouthful of chicken curry right onto Perenelle's face, which was currently doing a striking impersonation of Argus Filch-twitching jaw and all. Nicholas broke down laughing while Harry struggled to keep a straight face.

"Ha! The look on your face!" Nicholas said between guffaws, "Priceless…"

Perenelle fumed, before pulling out her wand and waving it. Nicholas's bowl of curry went flying into the kitchen, and a plate of disgusting looking salad came and landed in front of him. The rest of the meal was spent with Nicholas whining about his salad and talks about how Perenelle writing her new book was coming along.

Sooner than he knew it, Harry was back in his room, checking his HP and MP, preparing to enter what promised to be the worst ID battle he'd had yet. He tucked in the post-Burning-Day baby form of Hedwig, before he quickly equipped the appropriate title.

 **Apprentice Zombie killer- 30% more attack and defence when dealing with the undead. +5 to all stats when dealing with the undead.**

And then, he took a deep breath before he enunciated, "ID Create: Zombies!"

The world around him gained a red tinge. Harry pulled out Gandiva from his inventory and turned it into its ring form before putting it on. He mentally went through all his inventory and the skills he could use before he slammed open his bedroom door and ran out of the flat.

Boosting down the corridor to the elevator, Harry pressed the button to the somehow still functioning elevator, waiting until it opened with a ding.

There was a half rotten groaning zombie inside.

Harry didn't hesitate as he lobbed a fireball right into his face, before he kicked the zombie's burning body out of the elevator and headed to the highest floor. He hadn't ever fought zombies in a city before, and he needed to take the vantage point and analyze the environment.

With another ding, Harry boosted out of the elevator and up onto the roof, where he quickly checked every corner to see that there was no zombie waiting to jump him and take him by surprise. Leaning across the ledge of the building, Harry looked down at the roads of London.

It was as if there was a convention going on.

Hobbling along the road, where the largest number of zombies he had ever seen together. All the zombies were making a beeline towards the direction of the Buckingham Palace, trashing and destroying everything along the way. Deciding to follow and see where they were going, Harry jumped down from the roof of his apartment building and onto the roof of the Whitehall Theatre next-doors, where he vaulted over several hurdles and carefully climbed down the wall ladder which led onto the roof of the nearby herbarium.

Running over to the ledge of the herbarium roof, Harry stared, worried, at the width of the road in between the building he was on and the Institute of Contemporary Arts building across the road. There was no way he was making that jump. If he used fire to boost himself mid-air, he'd give himself away. And his control over air was still iffier than ever.

He couldn't even apparate. He couldn't see the place where he would land, and he needed to know his destination to apparate successfully!

A plan formed in Harry's head. Hoping that his control over the earth was strong enough to do this, Harry quickly used a focused Iron Fist on the floor of the roof he was on. The floor cracked, and Harry pulled out a piece of the broken flooring stone flooring that was barely big enough for him to stand on.

Standing on the piece of flooring, Harry focused a huge flow of mana into it.

His efforts did not go unrewarded for long. A second later, the flooring rose slowly into the air, carrying with it, the young wizard who was standing on it. After reaching an appropriate height, he flew forward slowly, trying to keep his focus both on the mana, and on staying balanced on the small platform he was using as a makeshift broom.

It all went tits up about halfway across the road when a crack drew Harry's attention. His eyes widened as he looked down at the flooring he was standing on. It was cracking.

Not giving a second of thought, Harry jumped and used whatever air control he had to extend the distance of his leap and keep him from plummeting. After a gut-wrenching second mid-air, Harry grabbed hold of the ledge of the roof, and with a heave, pulled himself onto the ICA building.

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up due to combining magic and parkour!**

 **Parkour Lv-17 (30%)**

 **Your speed in parkouring is that of an olympic level athlete-30 miles an hour.**

Harry waved away the screen, and from there, he ran using Unicorn Boost as fast as he could across the adjoining buildings, and towards the Buckingham Palace, all the while keeping an eye on the ever-increasing concentration of zombies. It didn't take him long to reach the Lancaster House, from where he finally had an unrestricted view of the Buckingham Palace.

And oh boy was it a view.

Hundreds upon hundreds of zombies were packed into the Victoria Memorial Crossing in front of the palace. Three ginormous piles of zombies were lying unmoving in front of the Palace. Harry knew that they would turn into Legion Zombies as soon as he finished the horde outside the castle. The entire place reeked like nothing that Harry's poor twelve-year-old nose had ever smelt.

Quickly climbing down from the Lancaster House, Harry jumped the fence and made his way through the Green Park, staying hidden behind the trees, until he was mere feet away from the outermost zombie, who, oddly enough, seemed to be wearing a DeFranco 2024 t-shirt.

Pulling out Gandiva and notching a flaming arrow, Harry prepared to give these undead bastards some hell.

The first arrow ripped straight through the heads of twelve zombies in a row before it tore through the stomachs of three more and finally stopped when it shredded apart the crotch of one.

Wincing a bit, Harry gave a wave of the hand towards the fountain in the middle of the square, and the water came to life and started throwing zombies into each other and tearing them apart. It took a lot of concentration, and his fire powers were now only limited to fireballs, but the sheer damage the water tentacles were doing was worth it.

He ducked under an incoming fist before he landed a flaming punch right into the attacking zombie's gut. The next one went down to a spike of earth, and the next an arrow. Gandiva flowed between its two forms as Harry alternately ripped into the ranks of the zombies with his fists and his bow.

And in just under five minutes, more than a quarter of the entire collection of zombies had been decimated.

Harry swiftly stopped his mana supply to the water, before he let loose a massive gust of wind, which started coalescing into one of his most devastating attacks. As soon as the tornado was stable enough, he quickly let loose a burst of fire at the swirling wind vortex.

The Fire Tornado quickly grew and fed upon the oxygen of the vortex of wind and turned into a massive fire tornado that started burning off any zombies it touched.

To even further the damage, Harry started shooting explosive arrows in high arcs above the crowd of zombies, blasting and exploding any and all remaining zombies.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

And all of a sudden, the nightmare of fire stopped, as Harry let his magical flames die away. The entire front of the Buckingham Palace was scattered with copious amounts of golden dust, which was all that remained of the undead massacre.

With their trademark booming thunderous sound, one of the piles of zombies that lay in the corner of the Palace started to fuse together.

But Harry was in no mood to wait and watch as an enemy pulled itself together. He had a plan. Quickly, he checked his inventory and found that he had two grenades left from his raid a year back.

Pulling out the two, Harry lobbed both straight into the swarm of fusing zombies without pulling their pins out. And seconds later, the massive Legion zombie stood to its full height and gave out a massive challenging roar at Harry.

With a smirk, Harry transformed Gandiva back into its bow form and notched an explosive arrow, before he shot it right at the Legion's filthy chest.

BOOM!

The explosive arrow went off with a boom and set off the two grenades inside the Legion's chest.

BOOM!

BOOM!

 **Critical Strike! Doom Arrow- 2200 x 700% = 15400 Attack!**

The walking zombie orgy exploded in a massive shower of blood and gore, before turning into dust.

Harry stared at the critical strike window in front of him. That grenade shot counted as an arrow!? So did that mean…

Ping!

 **Explosive Arrow upgraded to: Doom Arrows - Arrows made with a delicate combination of finely controlled elements…And a fuckton of explosive chemicals. They explode upon contact with target. And go boom.**

 **+90% Damage**

'Oh hell yeah! This is awesome!'

Notching the Doom arrow, Harry pointed it at one of the other two Legions that had fused and were rising to their feet, and let go.

BOOM!

 **Critical Strike! Doom Arrow- 2200 x 700% = 15400 Attack!**

Harry _felt_ the shockwave this time as it rippled over the ground. This was not a weapon to be lightly used, he thought as he pointed another Doom arrow at the final Legion and let go.

 **Critical Strike! Doom Arrow- 2200 x 700% = 15400 Attack!**

And with that, the second tier boss in the zombie dungeon was finished.

Silence reigned for a few moments.

Harry notched another arrow, alert, as he waited for the final boss in the ID. The theme of this dungeon was undead, so the next boss was sure to be some kind of an undead being. The wind around him started to pick up as a cold feeling started to set in.

It was a few minutes after that, that Harry looked up at the sky and saw it.

Flying at him from the skyline above the Buckingham Palace, illuminated by the rays of the waning moon, was a cloaked figure that was flying without the aid of any broom. Its face was completely hidden beneath its hood.

Harry didn't waste any time in observing the figure.

 **Dementor**

 **Lv-83**

 **HP:93400/93400**

 **MP: 200/200**

 **Str- 21**

 **Vit- 82**

 **Dex-65**

 **Int-21**

 **Wis-14**

 **Luc-0**

 **An undead creature, one of the foulest to inhabit the world, Dementors feed upon human joy, and thus cause depression and despair to anyone near them. They can also consume a person's soul, leaving their victims in a permanent vegetative state. They cannot be destroyed by any known wizarding method or magic. Insanely fast and impossible to kill, the only recommended thing to do when encountering one is to run.**

 **Kill to get- 10,000 Exp.**

Harry paled. This wasn't something he could fight!

The ID was undoubtedly not going to let him out while he was in a battle with the biggest boss in the ID. He had only one choice of action. Retreat and recuperate.

Turning around, Harry began to run as fast as he could along the Mall road. Unfortunately, the Dementor seemed to have taken that as his first move.

The cold increased a hundredfold, and Harry's heart coiled in his chest, making him stumble in his run. Looking behind for a glance, Harry cursed on noticing that the Dementor was following him, and was gaining on him.

He ran and ran, apparating all over the place just to throw the Dementor off, throwing occasional balls of fire and not looking back anymore, until a cold shriveled skeletal hand clutched his shoulders and yanked.

Harry's feet caught upon themselves, and he flipped over mid-air and skidded along the road before he came to a stop. Before he could even get himself back up, the Dementor was on him and pushing him down with a strength that was beyond the skeletal hands.

Fog started to obscure his vision, and flickers of memories rose to the surface of his mind before the Gamer's Mind immediately prevented them from appearing. He felt alone…so utterly…and completely…alone.

He could feel the creature watching him, hear its rattling breath like an evil wind around him. The dementor seemed to be considering him. Then it raised one of its rotting hands, and lowered its hood.

Where there should have been eyes, there was only thin, gray scabbed skin, stretched blankly over empty sockets. But there was a mouth…a gaping, shapeless black hole, sucking the air with the sound of a death rattle.

A paralyzing terror filled Harry so that he couldn't move or speak. His feeble attempts at using magic didn't produce a thing. The Dementor's powers were working on an emotional level. They were playing with Harry's hormone levels to make him _feel_ depression and despair…Gamer's Mind was helpless against it.

A pair of strong, clammy hands suddenly attached themselves around Harry's neck. They were forcing his face upward…he could feel its breath…he could feel its putrid breath…his mother was screaming in his ears…Maybe this _was_ his end…

 _NO!_

Something inside him stirred, and Harry's scar lit on fire.

 _How dare it?! c_ ame the thought from a deep corner of his mind. He had a life to live and people to live it for. The house elves and werewolves he wanted to help, the friends he had made, the family he had gained…how dare it this _thing_ try to take all that away from him?!

That small alien part of his mind stirred and fed those thoughts, manipulating and creating a particular emotion and giving it so much power that it dwarfed any sorrow or fear that the Dementor inspired.

Rage.

The one emotion a Dementor had no control over.

A burning hot feeling started in Harry's stomach, fighting the bone-chilling cold of the Dementor's breath on his skin. His hands gained a life of their own as they snapped up and grabbed the Dementor's head.

And on the command of some deep buried instinct, with all that he had left, he roared.

A brilliant white pillar of fire erupted from his mouth, and tore away at the monster's skeletal face, broiling and incinerating its entire head. With its head burned off, the Dementor dropped motionless onto Harry, unmoving, before it turned into dust.

Drained, and immensely exhausted, Harry passed out.

* * *

It was about an hour before he reopened his eyes, and another half hour before he was able to pull together enough strength to pull himself to his feet. He then acknowledged the screens in front of him.

Ping!

 **You have gained a total of 38,954 Exp!**

Ping!

 **You have gained a new skill!**

 **Dragon's Breath, Lv-1**

 **A concentrated breath of fire mimicking the magical properties of Dragon fire. Capable of burning through almost anything, and can be used for metal work too.**

 **1% level of control**

 **Cost - 1000 MP**

Looking around at the now empty ID, Harry waved away the screen and began the arduous task of picking up all the loot. All in all, it totaled out at a very decent haul.

 **9,000£**

 **1080 G**

 **18 x Wiggenwald potions(Low)**

 **5 x Sleakeazy's Hair Potion**

 **2 x SkeleGrow potion**

 **Healing shrubs**

 **50 ropes**

 **32 spears**

 **2 x DeFranco 2024 t-shirts**

 **Dementor's Skull - Crafting Item**

Heading back to the ID's version of the Flamel's flat and into his room, Harry muttered "ID Escape" and immediately fell onto his bed, intending to sleep through the next week.

Which was why he was extremely displeased when Perenelle shook him awake less than three hours after he'd fallen asleep.

Apparently, today was the day he was supposed to go to the Ministry for his tour, and he'd completely forgotten.

'Bugger,' he thought.

Thankfully, Gamer's Mind was enough to cover up his half exhausted state, and he quickly put on his best robes and enchanted the pocket to hold Hedwig comfortably before putting her in there.

Running down the stairs, he received strict instructions from Nicholas to go straight to the Chief Warlock's office, from where he would be shown through the ministry by whomever the Minister thought fit to show him around.

A few minutes later, he arrived at the Floo fireplace of the building, turned the fire green with the Floo powder, and enunciated the address clearly,

 _Ministry of Magic_

And he was off, spinning and hurtling through great distances, as the lights and sound flew past him. Soon, his feet found ground, and for once, he didn't fly out of the fireplace but walked out with some dignity intact.

A shrill voice rang out in his ears.

"Visitor to the Ministry, you are required to submit to a search and present your wand for registration at the security desk, which is located at the far end of the Atrium. The Ministry of Magic wishes you a pleasant day," said the woman's voice.

Harry couldn't care less. His mouth had fallen open at the sight in front of him.

He was standing at one side of a very long and splendid hall with a highly polished, dark wood floor. The peacock blue ceiling was inlaid with gleaming golden symbols that kept moving and changing like some enormous heavenly noticeboard. The wall's on each side were paneled in shiny dark wood and had many gilded fireplaces set into them, one of which he had just come out of. Every few seconds a witch or wizard would emerge from one of the left-hand fireplaces with a soft whoosh. On the right-hand side, short queues were forming before each fireplace, waiting to depart.

Seeing that a queue was forming at his own fireplace, Harry quickly apologized to the frazzled looking woman in front of the line and walked ahead into the Atrium.

Halfway down the hall was a fountain. A group of golden statues, larger than life-size, stood in the middle of a circular pool. Tallest of them all was a noble-looking wizard with his wand pointing straight up in the air. Grouped around him were a beautiful witch, a centaur, a goblin and a house elf. The last three were all locking adoringly up at the witch and wizard. Glittering jets of water were flying from the ends of their wands, the point of the centaurs a tow, the tip of the goblin's hat and each of the house-elf's ears, so that the tinkling hiss of falling water was added to the pops and cracks of the apparitions and the clatter of footsteps as hundreds of witches and wizards, most of whom were wearing glum, early-morning looks, strode towards a set of golden gates at the far end of the hall.

Harry's smile of wonder slipped a little at this. Was this how most wizards believed magical creatures saw them?

He joined the crowd of people, wending his way between the Ministry workers, some of whom were carrying dangerously wavering piles of parchment, others battered briefcases; still others were reading the Daily Prophet while they walked. As he passed the fountain Harry saw silver Sickles and bronze Knuts glinting up at him from the bottom of the pool. A small smudged sign beside it read:

ALL PROCEEDS FROM THE FOUNTAIN OF MAGICAL BRETHREN WILL BE GIVEN TO ST MUNGO'S HOSPITAL FOR MAGICAL MALADIES AND INJURIES.

Harry pulled out a few galleons and dropped them into the pool, before he made his way towards a corner towards the left of the atrium, where, seated at a desk beneath a sign saying 'Security', a badly-shaven wizard in peacock blue robes looked up as he approached and put down his Daily Prophet.

"Step over here," said the wizard in a bored voice.

Harry walked closer to him and the wizard held up a long golden rod, thin and flexible as a car aerial, and passed it up and down Harry's front and back.

"Wand," grunted the security wizard at Harry, putting down the golden instrument and holding out his hand.

Harry produced his wand. The wizard dropped it on to a strange brass instrument, which looked something like a set of scales with only one dish. It began to vibrate. A narrow strip of parchment came speeding out of a slit in the base. The wizard tore this off and read the writing on it.

"Eleven inches, phoenix-feather core, been in use one year. That correct?"

"Yes," said Harry

"I keep this," said the wizard, impaling the slip of parchment on a small brass spike. "You get this back," he added, thrusting the wand at Harry.

"Thank you," Harry said, and quickly before he could notice his scar, left the desk behind and headed towards the golden gates leading into the Ministry proper. Ducking under a bearded wizard, who seemed to have acquired an octopus for his hair, Harry squeezed into the lift.

The grills slid shut with a crash and the lift ascended slowly, chains rattling, while the same cool female voice Harry had heard in the telephone box rang out again.

"Level Seven, Department of Magical Games and Sports, incorporating the British and Irish Quidditch League Headquarters, Official Gobstones Club and Ludicrous Patents Office."

The lift doors opened. Harry glimpsed an untidy-looking corridor, with various posters of Quidditch teams tacked lopsidedly on the walls. One of the wizards in the lift, who was carrying an armful of broomsticks, extricated himself with difficulty and disappeared down the corridor. The doors closed, the lift juddered upwards again and the woman's voice announced,

"Level Six, Department of Magical Transportation, incorporating the Floo Network Authority, Broom Regulatory Control, Portkey Office and Apparation Test Centre."

Once again the lift doors opened and four or five witches and wizards got out, and at the same time, several paper aeroplanes swooped into the lift. Harry stared up at them as they flapped idly around above his head; they were a pale violet colour and he could see Ministry of Magic stamped along the edge of their wings.

As they clattered again the paper planes flapped around the lamp swaying from the lift's ceiling.

"Level Five, Department of International Magical Co-operation, incorporating the International Magical Trading Standards Body, the International Magical Office of Law and the International Confederation of Wizards, British Seats."

This was his stop.

Ducking out of the elevator, Harry headed through a corridor lined with doors. Oddly enough, despite being underground, there were windows scattered all around the corridor through which sunlight was streaming in.

'Enchantments perhaps' Harry thought as he made his way towards the final door, squeezing his way ahead of the pudgy Indian wizard with a snake on his head.

Reaching the oaken door which read, _A.P.W.B.D, Supreme Mugwump_ , Harry knocked.

"Come in Harry" came the voice of Headmaster Dumbledore.

Harry opened the door and let himself in, looking around the room.

Where the headmaster's office at Hogwarts was a random assortment of artifacts, books and tinkering silvery devices, this office stood in stark contrast to that. The room was neat and ordered, most of the portraits along the wall were stills, and floating piles of parchment hovered high near the roof of the room.

Fawkes trilled a greeting at him from a gilded stand to the side.

A single neat wall full of books stood behind the form of Albus Dumbledore, who was smiling at him. Seated at one of the guest chairs, was an unfamiliar man.

"Harry! Hope you didn't have trouble finding the office."

"No sir," Harry said, curiously looking at the unfamiliar man.

"Good. Good. Now, I'd like you to meet Mr. Ludovic Bagman. He is the Head of the Department of Magical Games and Sports," Albus Dumbledore said with a twinkling smile, "He is going to take you through the departments before we convene on a Wizengamot session, where you've been allowed to sit in as a guest. I'll let you two talk now. I'm afraid I'm going to have to leave to prepare for the session."

Ludo Bagman was a very enthusiastic and generally nice man, though from what Harry could tell from his description, a very prolific gambler. They greeted each other, and after Dumbledore left, they walked back to the elevator, where Bagman proceeded to tell him about all the seven departments of the Ministry.

He went into extensive detail on how his own department worked, pointing out the British and Irish Quidditch League headquarters where a lot of his own work happened.

"Mr. Bagman, how exactly does this work? If I were to, say, wish to make my own sport or game, how would I go about it?" Harry asked.

"Nice question Harry, very nice question. Well, your first stop would be the Ludicrous Patents office, and then you'd probably want to make some sort of club for it. Then there's the choice of whether or not you'll hold tournaments, so there's that to register. And then some more assorted paperwork to flesh out the rules, and you're done. That's how the lads behind Gobstones started, and now they're pretty popular. Albeit their reputation isn't very…"

"Cool?" Harry suggested.

"Exactly," Bagman agreed.

He led Harry through the Department of Magical Transportation, where a wizard was getting first aid for getting all his nails splinched up. Harry smiled at Gavin Melvinson, the Floo installer, who swelled up a bit with pride.

They then took the stairs down to the lower level, the Department of International Magical Co-operation, which Harry had already seen. They simply went further below to the next floor.

Level Four, Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, was the most ludicrous looking place Harry had ever seen. There was a man leading an invisible horse-like animal, a rainbow colored frog that was breathing fire, and a hippo singing opera. The entire floor was an all-out magical vet clinic.

Bagman didn't let him see the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes because he didn't want Harry to get squeamish or feel grossed out by the sights in that Department. Harry's numerous pleas and requests weren't enough to convince him otherwise.

"Level Two, Department of Magical Law Enforcement, including the Improper Use of Magic Office, Auror Headquarters, and Wizengamot Administration Services," the lift said finally.

"Well, this is our final stop, Harry. Now I've gotta go under to level one. Department of Mysteries you know, weird people down there. Anyway, all you've got to do is head to the Wizengamot rooms right there, and the guard will let you in."

With a wave of goodbye and a thank you, Harry headed down the hall, turned a corner, walked through a pair of heavy oak doors and into a circular room with many doors. A wizard in blue robes beckoned him over and glanced at his scar, before he led him through one of the doors and up to the guest seats of the Wizengamot room.

It was a huge hall, capable of seating a hundred comfortably. The walls were made of dark stone, dimly lit by torches. Most of the seats were filled by many figures wearing plum-colored robes. All except Albus Dumbledore, who wore a periwinkle blue as he sat his seat on the Warlock's seat. They were talking in low voices.

A chill traveled down Harry's spine as he saw who was staring at him from across the hall.

Lucius Malfoy.

Harry met Lucius's eyes and gave him a sharp nod. To his relief, Lucius gave a nod back. He had not discovered the Memory Charm Harry had put on him.

For now.

* * *

 **Whoo! The Horcrux really saved Harry's ass right there with that Dementor! And how about that house-elf lore? I'm doing another triple update, another series of chapters with minimal changes. Dialogue, scene details, and grammar are the most tedious things to fix, and that's what takes up most of the time. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish Book 2 soon and start Book 3.**

 **Leave a review!**


	25. Book-II:Being A Hero

Chapter 5:

The Wizengamot, to an outside observer, would appear as pure organized chaos.

Bills that were totally against common sense were voted in, and those that seemed obviously important were voted out. It looked almost as if the entire organization was working based on some massive coin flip that decided a law or motion would pass or not. It was sure to be incomprehensible to anyone who couldn't see the _very_ well hidden patterns and clues about what was _actually_ going on.

Harry saw it in minutes.

The subtle hand signs, the quiet murmurs passing through the entire halls, the nervous stutters, the victorious looks. Harry's keen Gamer's Mind saw and analyzed them all.

He couldn't help but think that it was like watching a bunch of spiders work their webs.

It was about an hour later when the Wizengamot was adjourned for a break. A majority of the members either hadn't seen him or didn't care enough to come over and greet him. They all went on their way to the refreshments room through a small side door in the chamber, and soon, the only people in the chamber were the Minister and Dumbledore amiably talking. Harry saw Dumbledore give a smile towards him before he shook hands with Fudge and made his way to the refreshments room.

The Minister climbed up to the guest seats and made his way over to him.

"Harry! So glad to finally see you. Did Ludo show you around the place?"

"Yes, sir. He was very nice and informative. It was fun" Harry said with a smile.

"Yes. Yes. Good man Ludo. Anyway, I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave now Harry. The criminal trials will be starting after the break, and that is very grim stuff. No child should have to hear or see all that"

"Of course sir," Harry said, although he did feel a bit curious.

"Good. Good. Now, do you need me to get somebody to drop you home or . . ."

"I'll be fine by myself sir. I might even just walk home sir. The Ministry is under Whitehall isn't it? It isn't too far from our house."

"Ah yes," Fudge said, chuckling, "Walking _is_ good for the body. I reckon I need to get in the habit myself, eh?" he asked, patting his belly.

"I have no idea what you're talking about Minister," Harry said with a smile.

The minister chuckled, "Good lad, good lad. Now off you go."

Harry left the chamber and made his way over to the lift. A few seconds later, the elevator crankled to a stop in front of him. He opened the grill and stepped inside. He was just about to press the button to go back to the surface, but something stopped him.

There was something that he needed to find. Something he hadn't found even in the Flamel library.

He needed to find more information on that House-elf Pain curse.

There were only a few libraries in the world that predated and were more vast than the Flamel's Library. There was the Hogwarts Library, but that was moderated and censored for students. There was the Library of Alexandria, but that was half burnt down. And then there were Libraries of the assorted Ministries around the world.

The British Ministry had in its possession the only Library that not only predated the Flamels, but was also larger and better maintained than it.

And if there was any place that he would be able to find any information on the curse, it would be there.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Sneak into the Ministry library and find out more about the House Elf curse!**

 **Rewards,**

 **10,000 Exp**

 **5 stat point**

 **Failure,**

 **House elves remain slaves**

 **Possible death…are you even surprised?**

 **YES/NO?**

Pressing Yes, Harry quickly slipped out of the elevator and made his way to the stairs that Ludo Bagman had used while showing him around. Nicholas had once told him that the library was open to public, but large parts of it were blocked off due to security reasons and whatnot.

Quickly jogging up the staircase to the entrance of Level Three, he let himself in through the decently sized door of the library.

Rows upon rows of shelves greeted Harry as he looked at the library uneasily. There was no way he could search all he wanted all by himself.

The aged looking librarian was asleep and snoring in his spot. About half a dozen Ministry workers were walking about in the archives section. Harry quickly pulled out his Invisibility Cloak and covered himself with it before anybody saw him, not wanting to get caught researching a Dark Curse.

He decided to approach the search for the curse systematically. First, he eliminated the archives section from his search since that was sure to not have anything remotely related to what he was looking for. Then, carefully making sure the cloak covered him fully, he made his way to the restricted parts of the library, where he began systematically eliminating sections before he finally narrowed his search down to a single shelf.

Thankfully, the books seemed to have been ordered by age on this shelf, so Harry simply made a beeline to the far end of the shelf and started reading the titles on the bindings of the books.

It was a while before he found the Rust brown colored tome that he'd initially mistaken for an anatomy book.

The name read, _Exploranthus Viscera_ by _Ralzinys el Sathar_

Harry restrained himself from grabbing the book straight off the shelf, and he activated mage sight.

For a second it was all almost blindingly white, and Harry had to squint really hard to look for what he was searching. And sure enough, after his eyes adjusted to the brightness, he saw small magenta orbs around each of the books.

The books were warded. Harry quickly activated Runic Burnout.

 **Runic Burnout Lv-6 (21%)**

 **A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. A common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.**

 **Do you wish to use it on: Common Alarm Ward?**

 **YES/NO**

Harry burned a small flame in his hand to keep the mana flowing and pressed yes. The ward quickly disappeared, and Harry pulled the book out of the shelf before promptly dropping into an ID, where he started going through what had happened in the memory and matching it up with what he was reading.

When Morgana had arrived, Ravenclaw had already had the ritual to convert the babies into house elves ready. But she hadn't known that Morgana was going to suggest the Pain Curse to control the house elves.

That meant that the ritual to make the house elves, the ' _Ritual of Sacrifice_ ' that Morgana had mentioned, was _separate_ from the Pain Curse itself, which seemed to be the root of the so-called 'slave bond' that house elves had.

So all Harry had to do was find how and what that Pain Curse was, and he'd have made considerable progress towards his eventual goal of freeing the house elves from slavery.

He found the spell somewhere along the middle of the book.

 _Curse #397_

 _Dynastic Permanent Pain Curse**_

 _Popular amongst nomads and feuding families, this curse causes pain of medium degree in the head region. The pain is reminiscent to a constant blinding headache._

 _The reason for this spell's uniqueness is the ease with which one can make it travel along to the future generation of the target. With a simple ritual and a potion, the entire bloodline will be infected._

 _This spell has fallen out of use due to the fact that the constant flow of magic in a wizard's body eliminates the effects of the curse very soon. But despite the effects being eliminated, it passes on to the child from parent and makes it feel pain for a few weeks after birth before its own body's magic eliminates the effects. And thus the cycle continues._

 _Symptoms:_

 _Blinding pain (Doesn't last long unless cast on animals without constant flow of magic in the body, in which case the pain is permanent)_

 _Children born with this curse often have a deformed and abnormal head and may have mental retardation, poor motor function, poor speech and some abnormal facial features unless the curse is not fought off._

 _**Incantation & Counter-curse unknown_

Of course! House elves _had_ no constant flow of magic in their body, which was why their pain never went away!

This curse fit all the symptoms of house elves _perfectly_. Everything from the pain, to the poor speech to the motor functions!

Everything fit!

And what was even more, was that he was pretty sure that even _Muggles_ had found something pretty similar to this curse!

He opened his inventory and pulled out one of the few Biology books he had, an encyclopedia of human diseases and ailments he'd nicked from the Surrey Library.

Flipping over to the Genetic Diseases section he flipped through the pages until he found what he was looking for.

 _Autosomal Dominant Microcephaly_

 _It is a medical condition in which the brain does not develop properly resulting in a smaller than normal head. Microcephaly may be present at birth or it may develop in the first few years of life. Often people with the disorder have an intellectual disability, poor motor function, poor speech, near constant headache, abnormal facial features, seizures, and dwarfism._

It was almost a word for word match! Almost as if the curse was _created_ as a way to give someone the disease. Or maybe the disease had inspired the curse. They were too similar to not be related.

Which was quite possible, now that Harry thought about it.

His earlier hypothesis, which he'd made only moments after emerging from that horrifying memory, was being proven right. His healing ability couldn't heal some Ancient magic Ritual thingy's effects, but it could _definitely_ heal a disease.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Sneak into the Ministry library and find out more about the House Elf curse!**

 **Rewards,**

 **10,000 Exp**

 **5 stat points**

Harry waved the window away and closed the book and leaned against a wall as he considered his next move.

He could just get a bunch of house elves together and heal them one by one with his own healing capabilities, assuming he even could heal them, but that somehow just didn't seem practical or functional. He knew enough genetics to know that if even _one_ house elf didn't get the treatment and then went on to reproduce, the entire elf population would be back under the curse in a few generations.

He'd have to somehow find a way to cure the entire house-elf population in one strike and without the knowledge of their masters, who would almost definitely not want their elves to be cured, either out of greed or some twisted sense of tradition.

Not having anything else to add to that train of thought, Harry quickly covered himself securely with his cloak and muttered "ID Escape."

He then promptly replaced the book where it was before, dissolved a few other book's wards as a distraction in case someone noticed the dissolved ward on the book he had used, and made his way out and back into the staircase he had come from.

He stuffed his cloak into his inventory and made his way back to the surface, where he was guided by a helpful brown haired gentleman towards a button that called an old red telephone box that came down from the roof. Getting into it, Harry pressed 6884455533 at the instruction of the man, realizing that it spelled out 'MUGGLE' on the phone's keys.

And then he rose to the surface, much like an elevator. A really, _really_ slow elevator.

* * *

After checking and seeing that he had an hour or so left before sundown when he had to get back to the apartment, Harry dropped into an ID, changed into Muggle clothes and headed towards the local Park to get some fresh air. After walking around a bit, he found an empty bench that looked over the small playground in the park.

As Harry watched the six and seven-year-old children happily play with each other, he felt an oddly nostalgic longing for the childhood he'd never had. His eyes followed some of the smaller girls as they moved about the sandbox making a sand castle, and his mind traveled back in time, to a point when he used to think that working harder and being better would make his relatives love him.

Of course he had no idea then that the reason they hated him was that he was magic.

He idly wondered how his life would have been had he been a squib. Born without magic.

Would Petunia have cared for him? Would Dudley have been his brother? Would his real blood family have actually not hated his very existence? These and many more oddly melancholic thoughts drifted through Harry's head until he noticed that the kids on the sandbox were dispersing to go home as the sun went down the horizon.

Harry frowned as he noticed a little girl with brown hair visibly flinch as the man who he assumed was her father placed his hand on her shoulder.

He looked around. No one else seemed to have noticed anything. Frowning, he cast an observe on the girl.

 **Chadwick Harper**

 **Lv-27**

 **HP-1500/1500**

 **Race-Muggle**

 **Str-26**

 **Vit-15**

 **Dex-12**

 **Int-12**

 **Wis-10**

 **Luc-8**

 **Chadwick 'Chad' Harper is the textbook definition of a bad man. He murdered his wife when he found out she was a witch because he believed her to be a devil worshipper. Now he likes to spend his time ranting about his job as a plumber to anyone he ever meets and abusing his daughter.**

 **He is feeling angry at her daughter for visibly flinching.**

 **He doesn't know Harry.**

His eyes widening, Harry promptly observed the little girl.

 **Anny Harper**

 **Lv-3**

 **HP-220/220**

 **MP-100/100**

 **Race-Witch**

 **Str-3**

 **Vit-5**

 **Dex-4**

 **Int-4**

 **Wis-1**

 **Luc-4**

 **Anny Harper is a girl who watched her father murder her mother in front of her. She has suppressed those memories and tries to act normally. She has constant abuse heaped on top of her due to her accidental magic. She likes cotton candy and playing with her friends in the park**

 **She is scared.**

 **She doesn't know Harry.**

The girl was a witch! And she was living with a murderer who was abusing her! He had to do something!

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Save Anny from her abusive father.**

 **Rewards,**

 **8,000 Exp**

 **New Title**

 **Failure,**

 **Anny continues to face abuse**

 **She dies before she can get to Hogwarts**

 **YES/NO?**

"How in the world do I keep ending up in situations like these?" Harry muttered, and pressing yes and quickly standing up, he set out to follow the girl and his father at a safe distance.

Fortunately, the roads they traveled were quite bare of heavy traffic, and thus he had no trouble keeping his targets in sight as he followed them. They walked nonstop for over twenty minutes around many corners, after which they entered the London suburbs, where the man and the girl entered a house.

He looked around it for any signs of danger. The house was decently large but not well kept. It looked like it had been nice and well maintained not long ago but had been neglected over the past few years. He noticed a few beer bottles that littered the porch of the house.

Harry stood there awkwardly for a minute. He had absolutely no idea what he was going to do after he reached their house. Dusk had fallen, and Perenelle would get worried if he didn't get to the flat soon.

It was a few seconds before a plan formed in his head. Harry used Gamer's Mind to memorize the layout of the house.

He'd be back later tonight.

* * *

Harry quickly apparated to a hidden spot near his building and went up to the apartment, where he spent the next few hours trying to act casual and normal while he ate dinner and talked to his guardians. He was getting impatient and worried inside, but he had to make sure that the Flamels didn't notice anything he did that involved his Gamer powers.

After he wished the two of them a good night and closed his own room's door, he quickly tucked Hedwig in. She was still in her baby form, but she was feeling all happy and bubbly now and would be back to her usual self in a few days.

Finally, he was ready to leave.

He pulled out his wolf jacket from his inventory and put it on with the hood on. He would need to disguise his form and voice to do what he needed to do.

Then, he dropped into an ID, ran outside the building, and apparated all the way to the house whose location he'd memorized.

 **Due to constant usage skill has evolved!**

 **Silent Apparition Lv-4 (42%)**

 **Destination, Determination and Deliberation. Apparition is a magical method of transportation and is basically the magical action of travelling by having the user focus on the desired location in their mind. It is by far the fastest way to get to one's desired destination, but is tricky to pull off correctly and disastrous if botched up.**

 **Cost-50 MP per use**

'This is one skill I need to grind more. It is way too useful to be only at level four' Harry thought as he dropped back out of the ID and took stock of his surroundings.

All the lights in the houses of the neighborhood were off, and the darkness was enough for Harry to sneak into the boundaries of the house undetected. He peeked in through the windows of the house, looking for the bedroom in which the little girl, Anny, slept.

After the kitchen, the living room, the father Chadwick's bedroom, and what looked like a guest room, Harry found the window which led to her room. The girl looked like she was asleep, with a small teddy bear clutched in her hands.

"ID Create," Harry muttered, and the moon took on a red color. He blasted a hole in the wall, and entered the girl's room in the ID, after which he commanded, "ID Escape". And just like that, he appeared in Anny's room in the real world.

Harry took one step closer, and somehow, despite him not making even a little bit of noise, the girl shot up, wide awake.

It took Harry less than a second to pull out Riddle's wand and snap a _Quietus_ at the girl to lower the volume of her voice before she caught sight of him.

And it proved to be a smart action, because the moment Anny saw him, she let out a scream and curled up into a trembling little ball, clenching her teddy as if her life depended on her.

Harry carefully and slowly moved closer.

"Anny?" he asked quietly. The vice grip she had on the teddy eased slightly, as two tear-filled eyes peered at him.

"I'm not going to hurt you, Anny, I am here to help you," Harry said softly.

"You're lying," she whimpered, squeezing her eyes shut, "You're going to hurt me. Did papa send you? I promise I didn't say anything to the boy at the park."

"Anny I-"

"NO! Please! Don't hurt me!"

Harry stood in his spot, looking sadly at the girl's trembling form. He had to calm her down somehow.

"Anny…Do you remember your mum?"

She didn't uncoil, nor did her trembling stop. A short nod was all Harry got.

"Well, you see, there is this whole world around us…different from the one you live in…special…like you. Like your mum. She was very special Anny. So special that she sent me to take you away from here. She sent to me take you somewhere safe," Harry said slowly, hoping that his tone was reassuring enough to the troubled girl.

"You're lying. My mummy is dead. I was there…" Anny replied back shakily.

Harry took a second to process that before continuing. "That's true Anny. But your mum was very special. She was so special that even after she was…gone, she was able to send me to help you. To take you away from here and to a place with special boys and girls just like you," Harry said.

"What do you mean special?" Anny asked quietly. Harry removed the _Quietus_ from her voice.

"Your mum was a witch Anny. She could do magic. She went to a school and learned all about it, just like you will one day."

The little girl looked at Harry, who let her look over his form, wondering what illusion the wolf jacket was showing her.

"Prove it," she finally said, and Harry was glad to see her finally gaining some confidence.

Lifting the Riddle's wand in his hand and pointing it at a spot over Anny's head, Harry incanted, " _Periculum._ " A burst of red sparks flew from his wand and coalesced into a circle of sparkling red light above the little girl's head.

A spark of pure joy lit in Anny's blue eyes as she let go of her teddy bear and happily tried to catch some sparks with her tiny hands. Harry watched her play for a few minutes as he sat on the edge of the bed before he heard her stomach rumble.

"Haven't you eaten Anny?" he asked, suddenly noticing her frail frame. This was even worse than he had been with the Dursleys.

The little girl shook her head, hesitating a bit.

"Do you like crisps?"

She nodded, this time more eager. Harry wished he could offer something more nutritious, but his inventory was running low on food at the moment, since he so rarely ever had to worry about it anymore.

"Watch," Harry said, before he made a big show of moving his hands and saying some magic words, before he pulled a packet of crisps out of his Inventory.

Anny's eyes shot wide open, "How did you do that? And how did you make the pretty lights! Will I be able to do that too?"

Harry smiled, "Of course you will. When you go to school, Professor Flitwick will teach you a lot of cool things, like magic spells and Professor Snape will teach you how to brew magic potions. You'll even get your own wand like I have. By the time you finish school, you'll be able to do a lot of really cool things."

Anny eyed the yew wand Harry was holding, eyes filled with fascination. Harry frowned as he noticed the bruises and cuts around her neck. No doubt the father had done his best to make sure no injury ever showed. But there was one large slightly infected cut running across her left cheek, so the man wasn't holding back too much either.

Harry met her eyes, "Hey Anny?" She looked at him questioningly.

"I want to do something to help your cuts and bruises. It might seem a little scary but I promise it won't hurt you. It's a healing magic that I can do." He said softly.

Anny nodded. Harry pulled up the Healing Touch skill that he had gained from the Philosopher's stone, and focused a large amount of mana in his hand, making it glow slightly from the inside.

Anny's eyes widened.

"I won't hurt you Anny, trust me," Harry repeated, as he moved closer to her and slowly brought up his hand, trying his hardest not to startle her.

'Healing Touch' he thought in his mind as he touched the little girl's cheek.

A ripple of pure white light traveled across her entire body, making her glow for a second before every single one of her wounds faded away as if they were never there. Harry at once noted that she was breathing easier as well.

Anny reached up and touched her face tentatively. Her eyes widened for a second before they rolled up her head and she fainted right on the spot.

Harry froze, staring at the unconscious girl for a second before he realized what had happened.

He cursed himself for not having realized the huge amount of stress the little girl must have been under. He should have waited to heal her later. Like an _idiot,_ he was doing magic with flashing bright lights near her face right after what was almost definitely the biggest shock of her life!?

"Stupid," he muttered to himself.

Then, Gamer's Mind brought something to his attention.

The reaction she had every time she was startled or scared…that reaction wasn't natural for physical abuse…he'd known physical abuse…felt it himself. This reaction was different.

The way her hands headed to protect not her head, as the natural reaction should have been, but to her rear…this was painting an ugly picture that Harry was liking less and less. He needed to deal with the father now before he took Anny from here. And if what he was starting to suspect was true, then there was a very high chance that _Chad_ wouldn't live through the damn night.

With that thought, he dropped into another empty ID, blew through a few walls, and reappeared back into the normal world inside the father's room. The stink of alcohol in the room was unreal.

Pointing his wand at the man, he incanted a spell he'd never really tried before. The Stunning Spell.

" _Stupefy_ " he incanted, and a red light struck the man's sleeping form, making sure he wouldn't be getting up.

Harry had another spell he wanted to try on Chad the twat here, and this one too he hadn't ever done before. But honestly, he doubted he'd feel bad if the child beater got hurt.

Holding open the man's eyes, and hoping that his Mind Arts skills amounted to something, incanted, " _Legilimens!_ "

He could only stay in there for a second before sheer repulsion at what little he saw drove him out of there. And when he re-emerged from the man's mind, Harry was angry. He was very angry.

The little glimpses that he'd seen clearly showed him that his suspicions had proven to be true. This man…this fucking sick bastard…he'd not only successfully gotten away with killing his wife, he also was sexually abusing his own _daughter_ . . . his own _seven-year-old_ daughter.

An angry buzz filled Harry's ears and he started seeing red.

This guy was going to face some punishment. He picked up the man by his neck, and dropped into an ID to make sure the entire neighborhood wouldn't wake up, and threw him with all his strength at the nearest wall.

'Just as effective as an enervate', he thought, 'and good for stress relief too.'

"AARRGH!" the man screamed, waking up to immense amounts of pain as many of his bones fractured in a bunch of places, making his every movement painful. "Who the fuck are you!?" the man yelled in between moans of pain, trying to get onto his feet as Harry walked over.

Harry's bloodlust skill activated.

" **Your worst damn nightmare,** " he growled, grabbing the man by his unkempt hair, and slammed his head into the wall.

" **Why did you kill your wife?** " Harry yelled at the man, pulling out the portable tape recorder which he'd stolen from a shop on the way home this afternoon.

"I dunno know wha-" Harry promptly slammed his head back into the wall before pulling him back out. "Fine! Fine! I'll tell you! Stop hittin me god damn it!"

" **Talk,** " he said, before pressing the record button on the recorder.

"My wife was a witch! She was a fucking witch! Fuckin devil worshipper man! Always goin about wavin that stick o' hers tellin me how that li'l shit she popped out of her would go to some fuckin Scot school," the man wheezed, "So I did the lord's work, chopped that little whore up and dumped her into the Thames."

Harry shoved the man to the ground and pressed the button to stop recording, and dropped it into the inventory. He'd gotten what he needed.

But the man kept talking.

"And since then…oh yes," the man let out a chuckle as he spat out a mouthful of blood "…I didn't have the heart to kill that little shit, but she's been takin all the punishments she needs to get all that freakishness out of her. She's been takin it in the right places too," the man broke out in deranged laughter.

 _Kill._

Harry's scar seared with terrible pain and Gamer's Mind snapped.

He turned around and launched a fiery fist right into the man's side. The man screamed in agony as his flesh burned away.

" **They say drowning is the most painful way to die,** " Harry said through gritted teeth, gaining a narrow tunnel vision as he pulled out a bunch of water bottles from his inventory and pulled all the water out of them with his mana. " **Who better to test it on than you?** "

The water shot forward and coalesced into a giant fishbowl sized orb around the man's head, preventing him from breathing. The man struggled and tried to scream as his breath was taken away, and water started flooding his lungs. A quick Observe on the man's HP bar showed Harry the HP bar.

 **HP: 925/1500**

 **HP: 900/1500**

 **HP: 875/1500**

Harry watched with a wild grin, only half aware of what he was doing as the man slowly headed towards the painful death he deserved in front of his eyes. Through the wild haze of unearthly rage and sadism, he didn't even feel an ounce of regret at what he was doing and was waiting for the man to pass, when suddenly, unbidden, and out of nowhere, a months-old memory came to the front of his mind.

 _It was Harry. But he was older. His eyes were glowing, one of them an unnatural green and the other a bloody crimson._

 _Harry Potter_

 _LV- ∞_

 _There were dozens of lifeless unmoving bodies scattered across the room. Stifling a horrified gasp, Harry saw the faces of Hermione, Terry, Ron and Dean amongst the many faceless corpses._

Harry froze, and let his mana go from the water. The liquid fell to the ground, no longer holding its magic enforced shape. The deranged man was gulping down air in wheezes and coughing out the water that now filled most of his lungs.

Harry's thoughts cleared for the fraction of a second. It wasn't much, but it was enough for Gamer's Mind to take hold.

"No…this man deserves to die…" Harry muttered to himself, "but I can't be the one to murder him…I can't"

The little piece of shit wheezed and coughed and tried to get back up onto his feet.

Suddenly, a spike of rage took over Harry. He lifted his foot, and with all of his considerable strength, slammed it right on the man's leg, shattering the entire bone into dozens of pieces.

The man gurgled in pain as he rolled about on the floor. Harry watched him in disgust.

"My conscience can only force me to not kill you right here and right now you filthy mongrel. Whether you survive the time between now and when the Aurors find you, is none of my concern," Harry spat at the man before he placed a hand on the man, and muttered "ID Escape."

" _Silencio. Petrificus Totalus,_ " he cast at the man that lay on the floor, making sure that he wouldn't be able to get any help until the authorities arrived. And then, he disapparated away from the man's house. He had to find the Ministry's nightly Auror patrol now.

And hope to all heavens that they didn't shoot him down.

* * *

Nympadora Tonks was having a nice week.

She had aced most of her first batch of Auror exams earlier that week, after which she'd just been officially given the legal authority to arrest, question and detain people. And now she was heading out for the Ministry's nightly perimeter patrols with one of her older friends, Emmeline Vance.

Most of the first part of the patrol went swimmingly, with only a few thieves to drive away and loads of idle chitchat and leisurely walking with each other.

It wasn't until they were walking through the abandoned roads behind the Diagon Alley, that it all went tits up.

" **Hello Miss Tonks** " a vaguely familiar voice called from behind them.

The two DMLE members quickly whirled around with their wands out. Tonks's eyes widened as he saw who it was.

It was the man who had rescued her from those muggles! The man she'd seen in the Hogwarts tower all those months ago! The man whose features always remained vague in her mind, no matter how hard she tried to remember or describe them.

And he had the limp body of what looked like a six or seven-year-old girl in his arms.

"Freeze!" she heard Emmeline yell, "Let that girl go right now! What have you done to her!?"

" **Her name is Anny Harper, and she is in no danger from me. However, she may be suffering from some serious mental trauma due to what happened to her before I got to her,** " the man said, his voice turning grim.

"We'll be the judge of that sir! Now please put the girl down an-"

"It's alright Emmeline. He's safe," Tonks interrupted her companion, who hesitated for a second before lowering her wand.

"What happened to her?" Tonks asked, lowering her own wand.

" **What almost happened to you a year ago.** "

A gasp escaped her as her eyes shot to the girl in his hands.

"Who?" she asked the man as he calmly walked forward and handed the limp body of the girl to Emmeline, who was looking confusedly back and forth between him and Tonks.

" **Her father. The bastard also murdered his wife when he found out about her being a witch,** " the man said.

"Did you kill him?" she asked, not sure if she wanted to know the answer.

The man seemed to hesitate for a second before he said, " **Almost did. But no. He is currently in his house…and in a…not inconsiderable amount of pain.** "

Emmeline was running a few field diagnostic charms over the girl as the man pulled out what looked like a tape recorder from his jacket's pocket and handed it to her. " **In case magical law enforcement fails to bring him to justice, hand him over to the muggle police along with this recorder. It has his confession.** "

"We will," she said, accepting the tape recorder, "Is there anything you want me to do for her?"

The man looked at the girl in Emmeline's hand for a long while before he looked back at her again, " **She needs someone who'll understand. Someone who can help her heal. Just…just talk to her when she comes to…keep her safe.** "

"I will," she muttered, turning to look at the girl. When she looked back, the man was gone.

"Tonks. Who was that?" Emmeline asked, eyeing the spot from which the man had disappeared from.

"I don't know…" she said, before she quickly turned to Vance, "But I sure am going to find out…Enervate the girl Emmeline. I have a question for her."

The Auror cast the spell onto the girl, whose eyes fluttered open, looking quite unfocused despite the enervate.

"Anny, Anny!" Tonks said, drawing the girl's attention to her "I need you to listen to me okay. Everything will be fine. Did you see anything like this in the man's hand? Do you remember anything about it?" Tonks asked in a soft tone, showing the girl her wand.

The girl dazedly looked at her wand. "Yes…The man had one like that. It was white I think. It shot out pretty sparks," she muttered.

" _Somnus,_ " Tonks cast, and the girl fell asleep. She turned to Emmeline and said, "Your herbology NEWT score was great, wasn't it? Do you have any idea what wand woods would be white?"

The Auror thought for a second before she said, "Could be spruce, yew…some rainforest trees can give white wand wood too."

"Good. I don't think Ollivander makes wands out of foreign trees a lot, so why don't you just get this girl to St. Mungo's and then look through the records at the Ministry to see how many people have bought spruce and yew wands. I've read they're both pretty rare. Whether the wand is stolen or not, we should be able to get our first lead on this guy's identity."

Emmeline peered at her face for a second before she nodded "And what about you?"

She felt her own voice take on an angry undertone as she looked down at the tape recorder in her hands, "I've got an arrest to make."

* * *

The Quest Success window that Harry had gotten the next morning told him that he had in fact done the right thing by handing Anny over to the Aurors, and that she was actually safe. That thought left him in a good mood for the rest of the day. And the new title was pretty dang sweet too.

 **You gained a new title. Couldn't gain some height though, could you?**

 **Hero Complex - Automatically +5 to every stat while doing good. +5 to all stats when doing good. Permanent buff of +10% to the chance of getting laid.**

He had then realized that there was an actual button next to his own stats window that told him exactly how much chance of getting laid he had. His current score sat at a decent 25%, with him having naturally had 5% due to his celebrity status. The window looked like the following.

 **Chances of getting laid- 25%**

 **Breakdown- 5% celebrity + 10% house cup MVP + 10% Hero Complex**

And what was even better, was that Hedwig was back to her normal form, which meant that he actually could play around with her a bit and get back to teaching her to communicate in English, which was progressing better than ever with the occasional help and advice from their good friend Fawkes, who dropped by quite often.

And thus, in a whirl of alchemy classes, reading and some potions accidents involving exploding toilets, the last weeks of August passed by faster than ever.

The end of the summer vacation came entirely too quickly for Harry's liking. He was looking forward to getting back to Hogwarts, but his months with the Flamels had been the happiest of his life. He had finally found a family. He'd found a home.

It was a bittersweet moment for Harry as he packed up all his stuff into his inventory, and as he had last year, put some stuff in his trunk, just for show. Hedwig's gilded stand was going too since a lot of the school had found out about the Phoenix while he was unconscious and she could now move about in the common room with freedom.

On his last evening there, Perenelle conjured up a sumptuous dinner that included all of Harry's favorite things, ending with a mouthwatering treacle pudding. Nicholas happily set up a massive indoors firework display, which filled the kitchen with red and blue stars that bounced from ceiling to wall for at least half an hour.

And then, finally, it was time for one last mug of hot chocolate and bed. It all felt slightly sad, like the end of a beautiful dream, but Harry consoled himself with one simple fact.

Tomorrow was a special day.

He was going back to Hogwarts. He was going back to his first home.

* * *

The red-eyed girl packed up all her ingredients and equipment in her school trunk with a wave of her stolen wand, and then set up several different concealment and protection wards on the part of the trunk where it all was stored.

It wasn't for hiding it all just from intruders and snoopers, but from his own host as well.

Finishing up with the trunk, the girl headed towards the bed, but the sight of the full-bodied muggle mirror that hung in her room stopped her.

He looked at the mirror's reflection for a minute, admiring the form of his host. She would grow into quite a decent looking woman. She would have some very strong magic too.

It was only her mind that was disgusting to him in every way.

Perhaps if she survived his process of making himself a body, he mused, he would _break_ her mind into something a bit more…agreeable. Given enough time, she could be to him what Bellatrix was to his Prime Soul.

The most loyal of slaves, in _every single_ way.

But that was the future, he thought. He made the girl's body go sit down on the bed, as he started working on his Occlumency.

He had set up a _very_ strong set of Occlumency barriers to lock away some very specific sets of memories from the mind of the girl while she was in control of the body.

Memories of the times he was in possession of the body, memories of the times _she_ was in possession of the body and he had made her…do things to herself, and most important of them all, the memories of Dark Lord Voldemort. Dumbledore could not find out about any of that…not even by accident.

He finished setting up those sets of barriers in a few more minutes and lay down on the bed. It would not do to have the girl exhausted tomorrow.

The red in the girl's eyes slowly bled away as his consciousness returned back into the diary and let its chokehold on the girl's consciousness go, and then forced it to fall asleep.

Tomorrow was a special day.

He was going back to Hogwarts. He was going back to his first home.

* * *

 **Nice parallel between Harry and Riddle isn't it? One's destroying a little girl and the other is saving a little girl(who'll be showing up in the future). Don't discount the house elf stuff either. That'll be important later in the Books too. Taking Harry down the path of a superhero/vigilante is also something interesting. Whatever your thoughts, comment down below, let me know.**


	26. Book-II:Weird Sort Of Girl

Chapter 6:

Harry Potter looked out of his compartment as the train slowly started moving, waving goodbye to his guardians. Hedwig had flashed right to Hogwarts from the apartment, and he had arrived well in time before the train left. The morning had gone pretty smoothly for him. For his friends though, not so much.

He glanced around the compartment, looking at the worried faces of Hermione and Dean.

"Where _are_ Ron and Terry?" Harry asked Dean, starting to feel a bit worried himself.

"I don't know," Dean said, "Terry told me that he was going to be coming with Ron's family. But the train is already moving. I don't know why they are so late."

"If they don't make it onto the train and then tell me later that they were late because _Ron_ decided to sleep in, I will _honestly_ lose it" Hermione fumed as she fumbled with her book bag.

"Yeah, well we've got a pretty long train ride now to think of ways to punish them don't we…hey look! There they are!" Dean said, pointing through the window at the portal from the King's Cross. And sure enough, the orange haired Weasleys were bursting through the portal in ones and twos.

"Come on Dean. Let's go help them onto the train" Harry said before he and Dean slid open the door and headed towards the compartment entrance, where they helped up Percy, Fred, and George, who had all pushed their way through the dense crowd at the top of their speed.

Mrs. Weasley was next, dragging her daughter through the crowd with her as fast as she could, making sure that Ginny got onto the train without any more trouble.

Ron and Terry came through last from the portal and started running towards the train as fast as they could. But their smaller frames were hindering them from moving fast through the crowd.

'They won't make it,' Harry realized with a start as the train started picking up more speed. He wracked his mind for a minute before he quickly came up with a plan.

Swiftly, with a few mental commands, he equipped his Leader title.

 **Leader- Allows the user to control his followers easily and gives a +10 to all stats for all followers.**

And suddenly, Terry and Ron both started pumping their legs harder, moving noticeably faster than before due to their boosted Dex stats. They made their way through the crowd in seconds and started running as fast as they could alongside the train.

"Take my hand," Harry yelled, the wind carrying his voice down to the two boys, as he extended his arm out towards them. He could hear the Weasley siblings behind him yelling encouragements at them to run faster.

It was Terry who grabbed his hand first, and Harry pulled him onto the platform with a heave. Then he extended his hand out again, and with another heave, he pulled up the last Weasley family member abroad the moving train.

"Th…Thanks…" Ron said in between pants, "Thanks Harry"

"Yeah. Good job Harry," Percy said, trying to pry off Ginny's death grip on his robes as she hid behind him.

"Don't reckon I've ever seen Ronniekins run so fast," George said.

"Didn't think he could," Fred added.

"Must have been the adrenaline," Harry said by the way of explanation, rubbing Ron's back to help him regain his breath.

A few greetings and pleasantries later, the rest of the Weasleys went off on their own as Harry, Ron, Dean and Terry headed back to the compartment in which Hermione was waiting for them.

"Are they alright?" Hermione asked, looking worriedly at the two late boys as they slumped into the seats, panting heavily.

"They're fine. Just out of breath." Harry heard Dean say as he shut the compartment and cast a _Colloportus_ on the door.

"Then will you _please_ explain why you were so late Ron?" Hermione demanded.

"Um…well…I fell asleep and forgot to pack…"

There was a small beat of silence, in which Harry promptly decided that Ron was screwed.

" _RONALD BILIUS WEASLEY!_ "

Harry shared a grin with Dean as they sat down and watched Hermione ream into Ron and Terry. It was always so much fun to watch. High quality 'lazy' insults were being thrown at Ron and Terry like a barrage of missiles. Harry tried to suggest one he came up with on the spot, but didn't even get a chance to speak.

It was almost half an hour before Hermione's rant subsided, and they drifted to aimless conversation and Exploding Snap. The train had carried them out of London, and fields full of grazing cows, sheep and lanes were flicking past the window as they hurtled through the farmlands on their way to Hogwarts

The latest round of cards had just literally blown up in Terry's face, when suddenly Harry felt his locking charm on the door being dispelled. The compartment door slid open a second later.

A familiar blond haired boy stood at the threshold of the compartment, with his two burly bodyguards standing off to the side behind him.

Ron seemed to have some serious problem with Draco, a fact that Harry had known, but never really seen in person until now. The red-haired boy had his fists balled up as he angrily growled, "Oi Malfoy! Ge-"

"This doesn't concern you Weasley," Draco Malfoy interrupted the redhead before he looked Harry in the eyes.

"Harry. Compartment 4B. I'll owe you one," he said before sliding the door close and walking off with his two thugs in tow.

"When did you two start cozying up?" Ron said, his expression scrunched up and clearly disapproving.

"We're civil to each other. No point in pissing off rich kids," Harry told Ron absently, wondering what was in Compartment 4B. Draco Malfoy wasn't the type to give away favors easily, and if this was something that warranted a favor then it was worth looking into. Standing up and putting down his cards, he said to the others, "Count me out of this round. I will be back soon."

"Harry," Terry said, fidgeting a bit, "The Malfoys aren't the sort of people you should be dealing with. He could be trying to get you into trouble."

"He's right," Ron added, "Dad always says that if there's anyone that you can count on to shake your hand and then stab you in the back it's a Malfoy"

Harry frowned, "You guys know that I've met and talked to the Malfoys a few times right? Don't you remember? I went to their New Year's Ball."

It was Dean's turn to pipe up, "Going to a very public party is one thing. Actively exchanging favours is an entirely different one."

Harry looked around the compartment, before making eye contact with a silent Hermione, "And you? Don't you have anything to say Hermione?"

She looked distinctly uncomfortable, "I…I don't like bullies Harry. And Draco Malfoy is a bully."

Harry sighed.

Even he himself disliked dealing with Draco, but his own political goals demanded that he keep treating the younger Malfoy as an ally. His status as heir to what was quite possibly the most politically powerful family in Britain, and his dislike for his father made him the perfect individual to endear Harry to the traditionalist politicians, whose political power would be vital for Harry's eventual goals in the Ministry.

"I know," Harry said to his friends, "And I hear you guys, but you tell me. Isn't having him as a sort of acquaintance better than having him as an enemy? We do have to live in the same castle as him for six more years, and we can't do that with him trying to making our lives miserable all the time."

They had no reply to that.

"Tell you what," Harry said, "I'll go check out what's in Compartment 4B, and if I see _anything_ off or suspicious, I'll just come back without doing anything. You guys know me. Would I ever do anything that'd get me in trouble?"

"Right. Tell that to the half-destroyed passage in the third floor" Terry snarked, and the mood in the compartment snapped back to normal.

"Hey!" Harry said with mock indignation, "That wasn't me! That was the deranged Defense professor!"

And with that comment finally diffusing the tension, he left their compartment, squeezed past the snack lady, and headed up the train corridor towards the path that led to the next carriage. The 4B compartment was all the way in the fourth carriage of the Express.

Entering the fourth carriage, he looked down the corridor, frowning at the familiar red-headed girl who was banging on the door of the compartment.

"Open the door! Open it! My brother is a prefect! Open it or else he'll get you!"

Quickly heading over to the door in question, he tried to peer in through the glass panes, but found them magically fogged over. Whoever was in there must have used some spell to do that to prevent people from, looking into the compartment. And a locking charm, he realized as he saw Ginny try to open the compartment.

"Mage Sight," he muttered, and took a look at the handle before deactivating his ability with a mental curse. This wasn't a locking spell whose counter he knew.

Looking back at Ginny, he realized she hadn't noticed him and was single-mindedly banging on the door.

"Ginny!" Harry said urgently, grabbing her by the shoulder and shaking the girl, who froze up the instant she noticed Harry, "Ginny! What happened? Why were you banging on the door? Who's inside?"

"Um…It…it's Lu-Luna. She's m-my friend." she said, her voice losing the nervousness as she started talking faster, "There were two of them. The g-girl and the b-boy just barged into the compartment. They saw her r-reading the Quibbler. So they started teasing her. When she t-told them that her father was the editor, they called her father an idiot, and when she tried to defend him they p-pushed me out and started hexing her!"

Bullies, Harry realized as he remembered what Quibbler was, before he looked up and down the corridor, "Where are the prefects? Why didn't you call one?"

"The P-prefects meeting doesn't end for another hour. Percy told me that I…I shouldn't disturb them…before he went to the meeting," she replied, looking very worried as she wrung her hands.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Protect Luna from the bullies!**

 **Reward,**

 **3000 Exp**

 **+40% relationship meter with Luna**

 **Failure,**

 **Blah blah blah. Death destruction insanity. The usual sort. Now accept the dang quest.**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry pressed yes as Gamer's Mind went to work at full speed. He needed to handle this right.

He knew how bullies functioned. Once they found an easy target, they'd lock onto that target for as long as they could. If the pair of bullies thought that this Luna girl would be an easy target, no matter how many times the prefects stopped them, they would keep picking on the girl.

He needed to make sure that they realized that this Luna girl was _not_ an easy target.

 **For thinking psychologically and getting into the mind of the bully, you have gained +1 WIS.**

A plan popped into his mind. Harry hesitated for a second. It wasn't going to be pretty.

Oh well. He had to let Malfoy's bullying pass in the name of his future goals, but he had no such compunction against taking care of _these_ two.

"Ginny," he told the first year girl, "I want you to go get a prefect," Seeing the girl hesitate, he added, "They won't give you a hard time. I promise."

With a hesitant nod, the red-haired girl dashed towards the end of the carriage, heading towards the prefect's compartment.

With her out of the way, Harry made sure that nobody was watching before pulling out his invisibility cloak and fully covering himself. All the compartments in the express were almost exactly the same in terms of layout, so he _should_ be able to apparate right into the compartment without any problems.

Now all he had to hope for was that the Laws of Inertia applied for apparition. Because if not…doing this inside a moving train was probably a _very_ bad idea.

Taking a deep breath to steel himself, Harry spun on the spot, disappeared from one side of the door, and reappeared without a sound on the other side of the door, inches away from his initial spot.

Ping!

 **Due to extremely skillful apparition in a moving body, skill has leveled up!**

 **Silent Apparition Lv-5 (24%)**

 **Destination, Determination and Deliberation. Apparition is a magical method of transportation and is basically the magical action of travelling by having the user focus on a desired location in their mind. It is by far the fastest way to get to one's desired destination, but is tricky to pull off correctly and disastrous if botched up.**

 **Cost-45 MP per use**

Turned out the Laws of Inertia did indeed apply to apparition. How lucky for him.

He quickly took stock of the entire situation. The girl and the boy, both of whom he recognized as third years from his own house, were laughing loudly. There must have been some silencing charms on the door, he thought.

Looking up, he saw that the first year girl, Luna, was hanging upside down from the ceiling with painful looking boils on her face. Tears fell from her eyes.

A fire was burning under the hanging girl, which Harry realized was a burning copy of the Quibbler.

'Fire. That's a good start,' he thought as he squashed down the spike of rage. He quickly and carefully squeezed his way across to the opposite side of the compartment.

* * *

"I do wonder which house she'll go to Marcus," Marietta Edgecombe said with a malicious smile, looking up at her spellwork. The Quibbler and the Lovegoods had always been something of a joke at the Ministry where her Mum worked, and finally, she could put a face to the name. She hadn't come into the compartment to have fun, but the Lovegood girl sure was a little pest.

"Definitely not Ravenclaw. Maybe they'll make another house called Loonyshire and sort her into that." her friend Marcus Belby said before they both burst into laughter.

But then she caught sight of something, and that laughter slowly faded away.

The burning Quibbler that was lying on the floor a second ago was slowly rising into the air in front of both of their eyes,

" _Aguamenti!_ " she heard Marcus cast, and with a spurt of water, the flame was extinguished.

But it remained extinguished only for a second, before it lit back up, this time almost as big as her fist, and then with a whoosh, split into two separate burning fireballs. She pointed her own wand at it, and incanted, " _Aqua Eructo!_ " which let out a powerful jet stream of water from her wand, that she used to put out those fireballs, which seemed to be burning off of nothing.

And again, the fireballs reappeared, even bigger this time, before they split into four fireballs, and floated in the air. And as this was happening, the Lovegood girl, who she'd stuck to the ceiling with a sticking charm, somehow unstuck herself, and floated back onto the ground and onto her feet, before somehow, miraculously, all her boils disappeared.

'That's impossible! Only a mediwitch can make those boils disappear! And even a mediwitch can't do it _that_ fast!' Marietta thought, as that tiny monster of panic in her chest started growing

The girl touched a hand to her face in awe, looking a bit thrown off for a second before her dreamy look reappeared. "You really shouldn't have pissed off an Umdingering Toadinger. They don't much like bullies and really like fire."

The four fireballs split into eight and started revolving around the Lovegood girl in a circle, while the pair of third years both watched warily. They'd never heard of anything called a Umdingering Toadinger. But the evidence right in front of their eyes was pretty convincing.

"I'd really say that you should apologize. They're sensitive creatures you know. You agree with me don't you Mr. Umdingering Toadinger?" Lovegood said, speaking out loud to the entire compartment.

And to the intense shock of the two third years, three of the fireballs shot up into the air above Lovegood's head and formed three easily distinguishable fiery letters.

 ** _YES_**

She felt a chill travel down her spine, as she turned to Marcus, who looked like he'd just shit his pants.

"I-I'm sorry Mr. T-Toadinger," she stuttered out.

Marcus joined her in apologizing to whatever this was, "W-we didn't m-mean to off-offend you or anything."

Another fireball flew up into the air to join the other three as they remolded themselves into a different set of letters.

 ** _TO HER_**

"You want us t-to apologize to her?" she asked. The fireballs flew back down to revolve around Lovegood again, before they flared brilliantly, which Marietta promptly decided to take as a yes.

"We're sorry Lovegood," she quickly said, not wanting to anger whatever weird creature was doing this, before she elbowed Marcus hard.

"Ow! Yeah-We're sorry Lovegood" Marcus added, rubbing the spot where she'd hit him.

"It's alright. Just don't do it again. Those boils weren't very nice were they?" the girl said conversationally.

This time, all the fireballs rose up into the air and clearly formed the words.

 ** _NOW SCRAM_**

They didn't need to read that twice.

They turned around, she cast the long counterspell to the locking charm she'd put on the door, all the while looking back to see if the fire demon was coming for them, slammed open the sliding door, and ran out.

Right into a Gryffindor Prefect.

* * *

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Protect Luna from the bullies!**

 **Reward,**

 **3000 Exp**

 **+40% relationship meter with Luna**

Ping!

 **For careful use of theatrical maneuvering, skill has levelled up twice!**

 **Theatrics, Lv- 3 (30%)**

 **You have a penchant for the grand, a wish to bedazzle and the desire to intimidate. This skill helps you achieve it.**

Harry waved that away and watched from the compartment as Percy gave the two Ravenclaws the dressing down of their life, dismissing their claims of some fire monster thing as accidental magic on Luna's behalf and threatening them with taking this to Professor Flitwick.

Since his attention was focused on looking outside the compartment to see what punishment the two bullies were getting, he almost jumped a mile when a hand touched his head and started scratching his head through the cloak.

"You have very silky skin Mr. Toadinger. I like it," the dreamy blonde girl said, feeling what Harry could only imagine was the texture of the cloak.

Not only had the girl found him while he was invisible, she was literally scratching his head like he was a puppy who had just done a good thing.

Harry's left eye started twitching.

"Hmm. Now If you'll excuse me Mr. Toadinger, my friend Ginny is waiting for me." the girl said, before she gave his head one last scratch and skipped out of the compartment towards Ginny, who was looking at Luna like she'd gone insane. And then she dragged her off to who knew where.

Distinctly feeling weirded out, Harry fixed his sight on an empty spot right outside the compartment, beside Percy and the two third years he was reprimanding, focused hard, and apparated to the spot silently.

Having had enough of this little adventure, Harry quickly walked up to the toilet, stuffed his cloak back into his inventory, and made his way out of the carriage as he headed back to his own compartment.

But there was something on his mind. Something peculiar.

Hermione was right. Draco Malfoy was a bully. He was a bully who had allied himself with Harry. But he was still a bully through and through.

And yet for some reason he wanted to _help_ this strange firstie girl.

This wasn't fitting in with what he knew Draco Malfoy to be. He was missing something. Something he needed to find out.

* * *

The remaining ride to the Hogsmeade station passed in relative monotony after all he told his friends that there was just a bullying situation in the compartment and that the only thing he'd done was send for a prefect. They bought the lie, and from then onwards it was all Exploding Snap and the occasional chess battle till Hogsmeade arrived.

Feeling quite a bit hungry, he stepped down from the train and onto the familiar tiny dark platform and waved to the friendly half-giant Hagrid, who happily waved back.

Before they knew it, they were heading up with the students along a muddy path towards the side of the platform, which led to the place where least a hundred stagecoaches awaited the students, each pulled by, from what Harry could see, something that was distinctly _not_ a horse.

Harry stared.

The creatures were completely fleshless, their black coats clinging to their skeletons, of which every bone was visible. Their heads were dragonish, and their pupil-less eyes white and staring. Wings sprouted from each wither, vast, black leathery wings that looked as though they ought to belong to giant bats. Standing still and quiet in the gathering gloom, the creatures looked eerie and sinister.

He quickly cast an observe.

 **Thestral**

 **Lv-20**

 **HP:4000/4000**

 **MP:400/400**

 **Str-35**

 **Vit-30**

 **Dex-50**

 **Int-12**

 **Wis-10**

 **Luc-6**

 **A female Thestral who is a winged horse with a skeletal body, reptilian features, and wide, leathery wings. They are very rare, and are considered dangerous by the Ministry of Magic. Thestrals are, undeservedly, known as omens of misfortune and aggression. They are visible only to those who have witnessed death at least once.**

 **She is bored. She doesn't know Harry.**

Huh. Invisible to anyone who hasn't witnessed death. So they must be invisible to most of the students, which was probably why they were eagerly climbing into the coaches and not screaming their lungs out, since the creatures looked like something right out of a horror movie. Trying to push away the grimmer thoughts that knocked on his mind's doorway, Harry climbed into the coach, and it set off, bumping and swaying in procession.

The carriage trundled slowly towards a pair of magnificent wrought iron gates, flanked with stone columns topped with winged boars, which Harry realized was the actual main entrance of Hogwarts.

The grand Hogwarts Castle loomed closer, a towering mass of turrets, jet black against the dark sky, with here and there a window blazing fiery bright above them.

The carriages jingled to a halt near the stone steps leading up to the oak front doors and Harry got out of the carriage first and turned back to look upon the Thestrals. The single memory of his parent's death unwittingly made its way into his mind, and Harry stood there, staring at the winged horses for a second.

"Are you coming or what?" said Dean from beside him.

"Oh…yeah," said Harry quickly and the group of friends joined the crowd hurrying up the stone steps into the castle.

The Entrance Hall was ablaze with torches and echoing with footsteps as the students crossed the flagged stone floor for the double doors to the right, leading to the Great Hall and the start-of-term feast.

The four long house tables in the Great Hall were filling up under the starless black ceiling, which reflected an uncanny image of the sky outside. Candles floated in the air all along the tables, illuminating the silvery ghosts who were floating about the Hall and the faces of the students talking eagerly, exchanging summer stories, shouting greetings at friends from other houses, eyeing one another's new haircuts and robes.

The group split up and headed to their respective house tables, as Hermione, Harry and Terry took adjoining seats near the middle of the Ravenclaw, just alongside the Grey Lady, who floated on the table. Hermione slapped Terry's arm in reprimand as he tried to peek up the Ravenclaw ghost's skirt.

Harry looked up to staff table that ran along the top wall of the Hall, and let his eyes scan along the teachers' table. Gilderoy Lockhart's blinding smile stood out above all else.

He sighed as he felt Hermione start to hyperventilate the moment she caught sight of the celebrity fraud writer. It was going to be _incredibly_ annoying if she was going to be like that every time Lockhart was in the room.

Before he could lament too much on that fact, however, his attention had been caught by Professor McGonagall, who had just appeared and set a stool with the ancient Sorting Hat on it right in front of the staff table, before she walked out of a side door. That meant the first-years must have crossed the lake and reached the castle. And sure enough, a few seconds later, the doors from the Entrance Hall opened.

A long line of scared-looking first-years entered, led by Professor McGonagall. Harry identified the dreamy expression of Luna Lovegood, and alongside her, looking as terrified as everyone else, walked Ginny Weasley.

The buzz of talk in the Great Hall faded away.

The first-years lined up in front of the staff table facing the rest of the students, and Professor McGonagall placed the stool carefully in front of them, then stood back. Their faces glowed palely in the candlelight as the whole school waited with bated breath. Then the rip near the hat's brim opened wide like a mouth and the Sorting Hat burst into song,

" _The famous four came together,_

 _On that one fateful night_

 _Together they pondered,_

 _Over the magical plight_

 _A school they created,_

 _A house for each_

 _Children to be mediated,_

 _Students to teach_

 _Helga felt that magic was a tool_

 _Created or born for all to use,_

 _Forged in heat of hard work's mettle,_

 _Hufflepuffs are you_

 _Rowena thought that magic is knowledge,_

 _For study of things otherworldly_

 _Scholar with books in your storage,_

 _In Ravenclaw you'll fit nicely_

 _Salazar saw magic as an art,_

 _A thing to be manipulated_

 _A true strategist at your heart,_

 _To Slytherin you will be sorted_

 _Godric insisted that magic was a weapon,_

 _The weak it should protect_

 _Those living with this brave notion,_

 _To Gryffindor shall be sent_

 _Four houses forever be united,_

 _And let Hogwarts be your home_

 _With that we shall end this ballad,_

 _And hope soon thy magic be honed_

 _So don't you dawdle and be afraid,_

 _Pull me over your tiny little heads_

 _And let me sort you for the rest of your days_

 _For I am the Sorting Hat"_

The Hall burst into applause as Professor McGonagall, who was waiting to read out the list of first-years' names, waited for the applause to subside before. With a frowning look that swept the four house tables and silenced the applause, Professor McGonagall lowered her eyes to her long piece of parchment and called out the first name.

"Aarondy, Juan"

A terrified looking boy that reminded Harry very much of Neville, stumbled forwards and put the Hat on his head. The Hat considered for a moment, then the rip near the brim opened again and shouted, "GRYFFINDOR!"

Harry watched the Gryffindor house applaud as the boy staggered to their table and sat down, looking as though he would like very much to burst into a billion pieces and never be looked at again.

Creevey, Colin's sorting was the next interesting thing that happened.

The moment the scrawny boy put on the hat, the hat's expression seemed to become scrunched up and angry. After a couple of minutes of what sounded like quiet grumbling, the hat finally decided that it had had enough of whatever was happening, and yelled out, "NO! I said I will not put you in Ravenclaw Mr. Creevey! GRYFFINDOR! Now get out from under my brim!

"Well, you can suck on my nards you wrinkly old sock!" Creevey angrily shot back at the hat before he ripped it off his head and handed it to McGonagall, and stomped off to the Gryffindor table.

"Mr. Creevey! Language!" McGonagall snapped.

The students' confused applause filled the hall as the boy went and sat at the Gryffindor table, and Harry joined them, just as confused himself about what had just happened.

After that, slowly but surely, the long line of first-years thinned. But the evening's peculiarities weren't over just yet.

"Lovegood, Luna" McGonagall called out finally, and Harry's attention snapped to the blonde girl, who bounced up to the hat and put it on.

That was when the next interesting thing happened.

The hat started to have something that seemed like a seizure, as it began twisting, contorting and turning in and upon itself as the entire hall watched in astonishment.

"What…is happening to the hat…?" Harry heard Terry mutter from beside him.

"I don't know," Harry muttered back. "D'you reckon somebody should do the Heimlich on it or something?"

But nobody did perform the Heimlich on the hat. Instead, after another half a minute of aimless convulsions as the blond haired girl dreamily smiled at hall, the Hat finally managed to croak out, "RAVENCLAW!"

And the Ravenclaws applauded, more confused than they ever expected to be this evening. A foreboding chill went down Harry's spine as he watched Luna Lovegood skip her way to the table and take her seat.

Thankfully, the rest of the sorting went swimmingly. Ginny Weasley was almost instantly sent to Gryffindor, and with 'Zaragoza, Steven' going to Hufflepuff, the sorting finally drew to a close.

As soon as the last first year had found his seat, Albus Dumbledore stood, looking as genially grand as ever in his bright orange robes that seemed to be competing with Lockhart's teeth for being the most punchable thing in the room.

"To our newcomers," said Dumbledore in a ringing voice, his arms stretched wide and a beaming smile on his lips, "Welcome! To our old compatriots, welcome back! There is a time for speech-making, but this is not it. Tuck in!'

There was an appreciative laugh and an outbreak of applause as Dumbledore sat down neatly and threw his long beard over his shoulder so as to keep it out of the way of his plate - for food had appeared out of nowhere, so that the five long tables were groaning under the combined weight of joints and pies and dishes of vegetables, bread and sauces, and flagons of pumpkin juice.

With a happy groan, Harry claimed the entire platter of pork chops and mutton chops, much to his housemates' displeasure, and started wolfing them down as fast as he could while fending off invading hands with strikingly accurate throws of the bones. It was a while before he looked back up, and when he did, the table was emptied of its contents, and Dumbledore stood back up to address the school.

"So!" said Dumbledore, smiling around at them all. "Now that we are all fed and watered, I must once more ask for your attention, while I give out a few notices."

"Mr. Filch, the caretaker, has asked me to tell you that the ever-growing list of objects forbidden inside the castle has this year been extended to include Turbans and Glowing Red Stones of any kind. The full list comprises some four hundred and thirty items I believe, and can be viewed on the door of Mr. Filch's office, if anybody would like to check it."

He took a pause to control his twitching beard before he continued, "As ever, I would like to remind you all that the forest on the grounds is out-of-bounds to students, as is the village of Hogsmeade to all below third year. And now, may I introduce our new Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher," said Dumbledore brightly into the Hall, "Professor Lockhart."

The whole hall burst into tumultuous applause as the frighteningly blond man stood and bowed to the entire hall.

"Professor Lockhart has been ever so kind to fulfil our Defense Against the Dark Arts position for this year, and I'm sure he will be able to fill all of your heads with his amazing insight that he must have gained through his extensive travels," Dumbledore said as he joined the students and staff in their applause.

Ping!

 **Lie detected!**

Harry waved it away. Of course, he already knew that Dumbledore was lying through his teeth to the entire school right now. Gilderoy Lockhart could only fill the heads of students with copious amounts of bullshit.

Harry wondered how long it would be before the entire school grew sick of the man's vomit-inducingly saccharine personality. He'd wager that it wouldn't take more than a month.

Suddenly, he caught sight of Dumbledore pulling out his wand.

'Oh no,' Harry thought, realizing what was to come.

"And now, before we go to bed, let us sing the school song!" cried Dumbledore. Harry noticed that the other teachers' smiles had become rather fixed.

'Oh no.'

Dumbledore gave his wand a little flick as if he was trying to get a fly off the end, and a long golden ribbon flew out of it, which rose high above the tables and twisted itself, snakelike, into words.

'Oh hell no.'

"Everyone pick their favorite tune," said Dumbledore, "and off we go!" And the school bellowed,

 _"Hogwarts, Hogwarts, Hoggy Warty Hogwarts,_

 _Teach us something please,_

 _Whether we be old and bald_

 _Or young with scabby knees,_

 _Our heads could do with filling_

 _With some interesting stuff,_

 _For now they're bare and full of air,_

 _Dead flies and bits of fluff,_

 _So teach us things worth knowing,_

 _Bring back what we've forgot,_

 _just do your best, we'll do the rest,_

 _And learn until our brains all rot."_

Oh dear lord! He'd forgotten how mind scramblingly horrible this was. He stuffed his fingers into his ears and prayed to the heavens that it would end soon.

Thankfully it did.

 **Ping!**

 **For surviving the apocalypse of auditory disasters, you have gained +1 VIT!**

Harry, looking just as glassy-eyed and traumatized as the first years who'd just heard that monstrosity for the first time, leaned on Hermione all the way to the Entrance hall, where he pulled himself together and excused himself in the name of going to the bathroom for a second.

He had a Slytherin to catch.

Flipping on his Invisibility cloak, Harry used Unicorn Dash to dash all the way down to the dungeons, where he found an alcove to hide in. He stuffed the cloak back into the inventory and waited for the incoming queue of Slytherins who would pass him on the way to their common room.

The moment he saw the familiar blond haired boy, he wrote out a single message on a small piece of parchment, which he crumpled up and deftly levitated out to a spot directly in front of the face of the blond boy, who frowned as he grabbed it and read it, before he excused himself from the group he was talking to and headed out towards the dungeons boys bathrooms.

Thankfully, no one saw him levitate the paper to Draco. With a sigh of relief, Harry dropped into an ID, and made his way to the bathroom before he popped back into the real world in one of the stalls.

Opening the door to the stall, he saw Draco leaning against the sink, washing his face.

"Why did you send me to that compartment?" Harry asked with no warning, startling Draco.

"Yeesh! Harry! You scared me!" Draco snapped, wiping off the water that had fallen onto his robes.

"Why did you send me to that compartment?" Harry reiterated.

"Oh…um…Father has alliances with the Belby family," he replied, looking a bit nervous, "And he has a very large amount of dislike for the Lovegoods. He'd have been…upset if I'd interfered."

"So you decided to scapegoat me?" Harry asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Hey! I told you I'd owe you one didn't I?"

"You can count on me to hold you to that" Harry said, before he asked the question that was on his mind, "Why did you even want to help her?"

Draco hesitated for a second before replying, "She…she's family."

* * *

After that particular conversation, Harry quickly caught up with the procession of students and joined them as they made their way back to the tower. The firsties got a little speech from the new prefects, and the rest of them headed up to the dorms, where Michael, Stephen, and Anthony spent quite a bit of time examining and admiring Hedwig, whose ego was taking a huge bump up from all the attention she was getting.

They went to bed soon after, but Harry wasn't going to sleep. He had one more thing left to do.

Peeking out to make sure that Hedwig was sleeping well on the gilded perch that stood in the center of the room, Harry muttered, "ID Create."

The glowing moon outside took on a red tinge as Harry walked out of the Ravenclaw tower, and headed towards the portrait of the blue bearded wizard in the fourth floor who was poking a _Mimbulus Mimbletonia_ and slipped out of the ID.

Fred and George had told him during the last Christmas break that this was where Professor Vector's office was.

Harry poked the _Mimbulus Mimbletonia_ with his wand, making it burst open and shower the blue bearded wizard in stink sap. The wizard grumbled for a second before he waved his own wand, and with a click, the portrait opened up to show an oaken door, which Harry knocked on.

"Come in," called the voice of Professor Septima Vector.

Harry opened the door and let himself in. The Professor was hunched over her desk, looking through a bunch of papers. There were three blackboards off to the side of the room filled with equations and numbers. A large painting of a sleeping woman hung on the wall behind the Professor. Professor Vector's voice drew him away from his inspection of the room, "Mr. Potter, you do know that this is well after curfew don't you?"

"I'm sorry to disturb you Professor, but I really needed to tell you something important about a project I want to start work on very urgently. Professor Dumbledore told me that he'd talk to you about it?" he said, ending the statement with a questioning lilt. This was what he'd asked for from Dumbledore the day he'd visited his office in the summer.

She looked at Harry for a second before she put down her quill, "He did. Very well. Talk."

"Um…" Harry tried to think of something he could say that would help sway her into agreeing to help him but ultimately decided on the truth. If he was going to succeed in convincing her then he didn't want to do so through lies or manipulations. "I want to work on a project about building a game. Using Arithmancy. Something that'll be…a sort of competition to Gobstones and Quidditch"

The Professor raised one neat eyebrow.

"And why do you think Quidditch needs competition Mr Potter?" she asked, sounding incredibly bemused.

Okay. Now it was time to make his case. He wanted to play businessman when he'd first conceived this pet project. Well now it was time to make his first sales pitch.

"Because Quidditch doesn't make sense. Take the snitch for example. The game does not actually end until the snitch is caught, and catching the snitch is worth 150 points whereas each successful goal by the other players is worth 10 points. Average goal per match is 10-20, which means that everyone except the seeker is rendered useless. One team's chasers could all literally stop what they're doing and go impede the opposing Seeker, and it would actually be a smart move!"

Of course, he didn't really hate Quidditch that much.

He didn't care for it, but he didn't _hate_ it. This was just being over-the-top and theatrical for the Professor's sake. He had heard that she wasn't that much a fan of the game either and was determined to use that fact to his advantage as much as possible.

He took a deep breath before he continued, "I believe that the wizarding world deserves better. A smarter game than just the Broom Balls Bang Bang Showdown that it has now. Something that would not only satisfy one's sense of adventure but also reawaken that spirit of curiosity and admiration that each one of us felt the first time we saw magic. And I want t-"

Professor Vector raised a single hand, and Harry stopped talking.

"That's enough of the theatrics Mr. Potter. I will help you."

Harry opened his mouth to thank her, but she interrupted him again.

"But not now. You're not the first one who has had that ambition, Mr. Potter. A few years ago, I helped one of my students create the modern game of Gobstones, and I helped another create Exploding Snap, both of which are major contenders against Quidditch. The developers were both fifth years when they started on their projects. Which is why I'd recommend focusing on your studies now. Come back to me in your later years and I will gladly help you. Besides, I doubt you will make much headway towards your goal as a second-year student."

"I'd respectfully disagree," Harry replied before he pulled out the file in which he'd compiled all his Arithmancy work, and handed them to a bemused looking Professor Vector.

That expression soon slipped off her face.

Her eyebrows kept rising and rising to her hairline as she read.

"I have to say, Mr. Potter that I was only humoring you when I was listening to your belligerent sounding rant on Quidditch, "she said, looking genuinely disbelieving," But this…you've put in some serious work. I know people twice your age who'd have issues even _understanding_ this. These are NEWT level calculations!"

Ping!

 **By catching the interest of a potential investor you have gained a new skill!**

 **Entrepreneurship, Lv-1 (20%)**

 **This skill will reflect your mastery and acumen in the arts of entrepreneurship, including but not limited to pitching, creating, popularising and running an enterprise. This skill will eventually evolve to show the aspects of entrepreneurship you have mastered.**

 **Branches:**

 **Pitch: A distillation of an idea into a summary to hook an investor and make them more likely to invest their time, money, power or effort into your project.**

 **Percentage of Success - (10+Lv of Theatrics)%**

Harry waved it away, and replied to the Professor, "Thank you, ma'am. It's just some self-study. Nothing too complex really"

It _was_ complex. He'd had to level up his Arithmancer skill thrice before he could even start working on it. Using Arithmancy to calculate the future of his hypothetical business with probability matrices was one of the hardest things he'd ever done, but he needed to prove to Vector that he was serious about this, and he was capable of it. And this was the only way of doing it.

"Very well then Mr. Potter." Vector said, "You've done your work in Business modeling and Arithmantic projections. I know that you're serious about this, but I still need to hear your ideas about what the _game_ is going to be. This file has nothing about that. Oh, and do sit down."

Harry took a seat, glad to know that he'd swayed Professor Vector.

"Scanning, Growing and Battling. That's the base of the idea." he said, starting his explanation about his game, "When a player encounters a real life creature, he will scan it, and a virtual copy of the creature will then be added to his collection. That's the Scanning part. Then those creatures can be used to 'Battle' with fellow players. I still have to figure out a way to design that part yet. The Evolving part is also something that I am still working on, but the basic idea is that a player can 'Grow' a non-magical creature, that he had previously scanned, into a magical creature by repeatedly using it in battle. And he can the further 'Grow' it up into a rarer and more powerful creature one more time. Something in the vein of growing a Snake to a Bisthmus, then to an Ashwinder."

The professor nodded as she kept looking at the papers in front of her, making Harry feel a bit nervous. He fidgeted a bit, before he couldn't remain still anymore and asked, "Do you have any questions Professor?"

"Yes actually. That scanning thing you talked about. Won't people be in danger if they go too close to a dangerous magical creature to scan it?"

"Um…no actually. I've had this idea, called the Minimum Safe Distance, from which a player can scan a creature. Every creature will have a different one, so that people will not have to go too near to a dangerous creature to scan it," Harry explained.

"And what is that Distance based on?"

"Depends on the creature." he clarified, "It'll probably be a couple of feet for a Niffler or Kneazle and more than a hundred feet for a Unicorn or Troll. It'll depend upon the rarity and danger from the creature. I'll probably be using the Ministry's XXX based classification to set the range in which players can scan the creatures. That way, people won't need to get close to dangerous or super rare creatures to scan them."

"Good" she just said, before flipping through the file once more, "Another question. I assume that this all this 'scanning' and 'growing' and all this data storage you'll need to do will happen inside the magical artifact that you want to create?"

"Yes. I've got most of my years at Hogwarts left, which is why I want to keep working on that as a side project. While I did calculate the business projections to prove to you that I'm serious, this is a passion project. Something I'm doing as a challenge to myself."

"Hmm. It is good to hear that you aren't going to rush it and are willing to take your time in developing this. Patience is always a good thing. And let me tell you this. If you honestly pull this off before you leave Hogwarts, I'll happily nominate you for an Arithmancy Mastery," she said, finally giving Harry an approving look, which relaxed him quite a bit. "So what are you asking from me?"

"I need your help in making this a legitimate project Professor. If you accept this project as an official Arithmancy project, I will be able to work on this as a school project and won't have to go through all the hoops of getting a license for Arithmancy experimenting from the Ministry. And your help will definitely be very welcome and appreciated."

Professor Vector seemed to think for a second, considering the detailed proposal that Harry had just put forth. And then she spoke.

"You'll have to be very patient while you work on it under me. And I will not have you slacking in your regular studies in the name of a side project for my class."

"Understood."

"You'll also have to convince all of the Professors that you can handle the extra load."

"I'm willing to do that."

"It won't be easy."

"Nothing worthwhile is."

* * *

At that very moment, deep underneath Hogwarts in a vaulted chamber, a first-year girl with red eyes finished setting up all the potion ingredients in a corner safe from interference and loose rubble, before warding it up against any pests that might have taken residence since he'd last been in this chamber.

Making sure that it all was in place and protected, she walked out to the center of the chamber with a bone-chilling smile on her face.

It was time.

She closed her red eyes before hissing, " _Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts four_ "

Salazar Slytherin's gigantic stone face rumbled and moved. Dust and rocks formed over decades of disuse dislodged themselves and fell to the ground as the statue's mouth opened wider and wider, to make a huge black hole.

Two giant yellow eyes shone from the depths of the darkness.

* * *

 **For those of you who are worried about the writing on this 'Game' Harry is building to be all nerdy and not plot-relevant, don't worry. It is building up to play a vital role in Harry's ministry interactions and the Peter Pettigrew plotline(I'm sure the smarter ones of you could easily figure out how an artifact that scans animals could be useful in that particular plotline). I'm gearing the story a lot more towards plot this time, so that's where my attention is.**

 **Let me know your thoughts in a review.**


	27. Book-II:Slip Of The Tongue

Chapter 7:

Halfway through the breakfast next day, Harry had already seen more than enough of his share of googly eyes and admiring looks for owning a phoenix. It was annoying as all hell to have people staring at him while he was eating a banana.

Not to mention just plain creepy.

Sighing, Harry picked up his goblet of pumpkin juice and sipped on it as he watched Terry and Hermione discuss the very interesting conversation that the second year Ravenclaws had with Professor Flitwick this morning.

"Now listen here second years," Professor Flitwick had said after waking the entire tower up using a _very_ loud alarm charm, and handing out their class schedules, "When you begin your third year, you will have to choose two or more electives to sit for the rest of your years here at Hogwarts. There are five electives to choose from. Divination teaches methods of divining the future or gathering insights into future events, through various rituals and tools. Arithmancy deals with number patterns and calculations, which will have applications in many aspects of magic, not the least of which is spell crafting and modifying. Study of Ancient Runes is a mostly theoretical subject that studies the ancient runic scripts of magic. In Care of Magical Creatures you will learn about a wide range of magical creatures, and you will be taught about feeding, maintaining, breeding, and proper treatment of these various creatures. Muggle Studies is exactly what the name implies, the study of the daily lives of Muggles."

"But sir, why are you telling that to us now? Don't we have another year to go before we have to choose?" Michael had asked

"Indeed you do," Professor Flitwick had replied, "But since you are Ravenclaws, I believe you should be making an informed choice. I have arranged with all the elective teachers to give you a demonstration class of sorts. So today, you will be getting a taste of what you'll be in for next year, so that you can make an informed choice. Now keep in mind that while you're not _required_ to attend all of these classes, I would indeed recommend that you do so"

That was how they'd found out that today wasn't going to be a normal day of classes. Instead, they would be seeing the classes that they'd never seen before.

It was going to be an interesting day.

Putting down his goblet of juice, Harry remembered something that he'd intended to do the moment he'd stepped foot into Hogwarts, but had forgotten in all the excitement of the previous night.

"Location bonus," Harry muttered under his breath, curious about what bonuses his school would offer.

 **Location Bonus: Hogwarts Castle**

 **+20% HP regen**

 **+40% MP regen**

 **x2 learning speed for all theoretical magic.**

 **x3 learning speed for all practical magic.**

Learning boosts and regen boosts. Nothing too spectacular, but still extremely useful. And he still hadn't eliminated the possibility that each classroom had its own specific location boost.

Suddenly, there was a rushing sound overhead, and a hundred or so owls streamed in, circling the hall and dropping letters and packages into the chattering crowd. Harry, Hermione, and Terry took advantage of the distraction and slipped out of the Great Hall together.

They crossed the courtyard and headed over to the Arithmancy classroom, which was the first class that Professor Flitwick had told them to head to.

The classroom was quite similar in looks to the Charms classroom, only with a lot more blackboards, which made sense considering the highly theoretical nature of the class. They took their seats near the front of the class and waited for the rest of the Ravenclaws to arrive.

Fifteen minutes later, when the rest of the Ravenclaws had all arrived in ones and twos and taken their seats, Professor Vector strode into the class and began teaching. She was quite strict, and did not tolerate any disturbances in the classroom, as evidenced by Anthony and Stephen losing 20 points in the span of ten minutes for whispering in the back of the class.

After finishing up a long lecture in which she explained how common Mathematics, which was taught to both wizarding and Muggleborn students alike, was incredibly valuable to the class, she decided to demonstrate some of the uses of Arithmancy.

"One of the most used and most common uses of Arithmancy is the creation and modification of spells. As I'm sure Professor Flitwick explained to you in your first year, the most common example used to explain this is the _Aguamenti_ charm, which was invented based upon the Cooling charm to cool down water vapor in the air, the Summoning charm to pull the water vapor to the wand, and the Banishing charm, to maintain a constant strong flow of water. That is how spell creation works. Let's look at another common example."

Professor Vector went over to the blackboard, picked up a chalk, and wrote down two lines of numbers, mathematical symbols and letters. An equation, Harry realized.

"Every spell has its own equation that represents its properties and effects. These two, are those of the spells _Accio_ and _Depulso_. The Summoning and Banishing Charms. One is push. The other is pull. Together, they were combined, via Arithmantic calculations, to form a very well-known spell, the _Leviosa_ spell. Combining these two spells, and then stabilizing their equations, led the Ancient wizards to discover levitation. Much like this, almost every complicated spell that you will ever learn has been created by combining two or more less complex spells, which were themselves made by combining even further basic spells, and so on. You can compare this to the concept of examples of Prime numbers and Composite numbers in Mathematics. Composites can be broken down, Primes cannot. Yes Mr. Goldstein?"

"Does this apply to every spell? Or are there spells that are complicated from the very beginning, and cannot be broken down?"

"Very few spells are complicated from the very beginning, Mr. Goldstein, but they do indeed exist. The infamously difficult _Patronus_ Charm is one of them. Any more questions? No? Then let's head to the next part. Spell modification," she said, before cleaning the blackboard and writing another very small equation on it.

"This right here, is one of the simplest equations that you'll ever see. This is the equation for the spell _Lumos._ By tweaking the various variables in an equation, you can modify the spell in many different ways. You can change its intensity and color. You can design it to float in the air. You can even make it follow you around and light your path. Other spells are nowhere near as simple, but this is the basics of how they are modified. Now, enough of the lecture, let me demonstrate to you how you will be going about making a new spell."

She turned to the blackboard, and started writing, all the while dictating out loud what she was doing.

"Here you can see that I am writing down a bunch of equations, all of which we'll be combining to form a new spell. There's the petrifying spell, the charm for static electricity, the common hair straightening charm, and the featherweight charm. There is a timing equation mixed in too, in order to make sure the spell will wear off after a while. You can probably already see that I'm making a charm that will affect a person's hair. The static electricity and featherweight spells are to make the required style of hair to form. And the petrifying charm is to fix the hair in that style and stop it from instantly reforming into its original form."

She then proceeded to do a bunch of calculations that were incomprehensible to most of the class, before she turned around to look at the class, and said, "Hmm…usually people set the incantation of a spell to indicate what effect the spell has, but we're just experimenting here, so why don't we call this spell…what's your name Miss?"

Hermione snapped to attention, "Granger ma'am. Hermione Granger"

The Professor nodded and added a tweak to the equation, "Very well then. We shall call this spell, _Vibrissa Grangeris_ , a spell that requires two straight flicks and a twirl, and gives the target incredibly frizzy hair for a period of five minutes"

The class burst out into raucous laughter, and Hermione turned as red as a fresh tomato. Professor Vector smiled and demonstrated the wand movements, and soon the entire class was trying out the spell on each other, and almost everyone ended up with a frizzy new hairdo. Harry's already messy hair now flared like a black bush on his head, almost as if an owl had decided to nest in there.

"Enough!" the Professor said, after letting them fool around for a few minutes, "Settle down now. The spell will wear off in a few minutes. Now, the next demonstration, and one of the most impressive applications of the art of Arithmancy, is the numerological predictions using probability matrices."

Harry perked up in his seat. This was what he'd done with the business predictions that he had shown Vector. He was curious about how Professor Vector would demonstrate this.

The professor picked up a few pieces of chalk, and then handed them to Hermione, who was in the front row with them.

"Miss Granger, would you mind transfiguring these into dice? Ten will do," she instructed.

Hermione looked at her a bit puzzled, before she pulled out her wand and started transfiguring the chalk pieces one by one into dice. Professor Vector walked over to the blackboard, did some calculations, before she came over to him, and asked, "Mr. Potter, can I borrow your quill and a piece of paper please?"

Harry promptly handed the requested items to her, which she used to write down what looked like a random series of numbers on the paper, and showed them to the class.

 _1432616153_

"One four three two six one six one five three. A ten digit number. Ms. Granger, would you please pass those dice around to each of your classmates? Keep one for yourself. Good. Now, let me explain what we will be doing here. The dice you are holding in your hands are freshly made and brand new. Miss Granger has transfigured them for us right now. They are untouched by me and are in no way tampered or loaded. Is that understood? Good. Now, if each of you were to roll your die, and then say your numbers in the alphabetical order of your first names, we would get a unique ten digit number. And by my numerologically calculated prediction, it would be _that_ exact number."

"You're _joking_! There are over a _thousand_ possible results! There's no way you could've done that!"

"Over 60 million, actually, and we will see about that won't we Mr. Cornfoot? Everyone, roll your die" she commanded, and Harry knew the moment he saw the number on his die that she'd done it.

"Let's go through your names alphabetically, shall we?" Professor Vector said, heading back to her desk and opening up the attendance register.

"Anthony Goldstein."

"One," Anthony replied, staring at his die oddly.

"Harry Potter."

"Four."

"Hermione Granger."

"Three!" she immediately said, looking incredibly excited.

"Lisa Turpin."

"Two," came Lisa Turpin's voice from the back of the class.

"Mandy Brocklehurst."

"Six."

"Michael Corner."

"One!"

"Padma Patil."

"Six!"

"Stephen Cornfoot?"

"One…"

"Su Li."

"Five."

"Terry Boot?"

"Three," said Terry in a disbelieving tone.

 _1432616153_

It was an exact match.

"And that," Professor Vector said, looking slightly puffed up in her victory, "is why you will soon find that a good Arithmancer is never poor. A feat like that will take you at least until your OWL year to master."

She looked Harry in the eyes, "Of course, the more talented amongst you might be able to master it _much_ earlier than that. We'll see."

Handing his quill back to Harry, she walked back to the desk and looked each of them in the eye.

"With the power of numbers, one can predict the random, read the unreadable, and create the unthinkable. Such is the power of Arithmancy"

Ping!

 **You just got schooled bruh! Take +2 to your Int!**

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up due to paying attention in class!**

 **Arithmancer, Lv-5 (21%)**

 **Allows the user to use the arts of Arithmancy to create and modify spells. Further uses include prediction of the future through high density probability matrices and being classified as a magical nerd.**

"Class dismissed," the Professor said after a moment of silence, "Mr. Potter, stay back for a moment."

Harry nodded, and assured his friends that he'd catch up with them in the Runes class. Soon, the class was empty except for him and the Professor.

"Mr. Potter," she said, pulling out a small slip of paper, "I have taken the liberty of filing your project form with the Ministry Department of Magical Education. Thankfully, with your name on the cover, the form was fast-tracked pretty quickly. Unfortunately, there has been a complication."

"Complication?" Harry asked warily.

"Indeed. It appears that since you are one of the youngest people to ever have been allowed to have a personal project in a major subject, you need the permission of every single one of your teachers before your form is approved. This permission slip needs to be completely filled and submitted before tomorrow. Otherwise, your project will be rejected."

"Every single one?" Harry asked weakly.

"Every single one," she reiterated.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Convince all of the Hogwarts teachers to sign your permission slip**

 **Reward,**

 **10,000 Exp**

 **Legal permission to build your game**

 **Failure,**

 **Loss of reputation amongst teachers**

 **Failure of the 'Knock Quidditch out' quest as well**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry sighed, and pressed yes, before turning his attention back to the professor, who had started speaking again.

"Now, don't worry too much. I've done a lot of it for you. The Divination, Muggle Studies, History of Magic, and Ancient Runes professors have already signed it on my personal assurances and requests. The rest of the signatures, however, are up to you to collect. I will need the permission slip by tonight to send it off to the Ministry, so I'd recommend that you start collecting the signatures pretty soon. Got it?"

"Yes Professor," Harry said, pocketing the permission slip.

"Good. Now off you go. You'll be late for your Runes class"

Harry nodded and thanked the Professor before he left the class walking at a brisk speed, not wanting to be late.

Hopefully, Study of Ancient Runes would be an interesting class.

* * *

Study of Ancient Runes wasn't an interesting class.

Despite its insanely useful nature, the class, at least in the beginning, was composed entirely of having to memorize ancient scripts. It was basically a language class in the beginning that people interested in researching ancient sites would have to take. Or, if they were feeling particularly crazy and wanted to compete with the goblins in the warding industry.

Although it did have some uses in modern wards, it appeared that a lot of the more spectacular and powerful magic, like his Runic Burst move, had been all forgotten with time. Which meant that once he'd learned all the ancient scripts from this class, he'd have to go exploring to some ancient tombs or something similar to pick up new Runes based skills and attacks.

It was a useful class, but it was a _very_ boring class.

Ron and Dean joined them for lunch, talking about how they had dealt with the incredibly dangerous Mandrakes in the Herbology class, making Harry feel even worse about having missed out on what looked like a very interesting class about deadly plants in favor of what was basically an hour of old dictionary reading.

The lunch passed by very quickly, with the only interesting thing that happened was Harry having to deal with a frantic first year named Colin Creevey.

"Alright, Harry? I'm…I'm Colin Creevey," he said breathlessly, taking a tentative step forward. "I'm in Gryffindor. D'you think…would it be all right if…can I have a picture?" he said, raising the camera hopefully.

"Afraid not Colin," Harry had said instinctively and the kid had turned bright red and ran off, making Harry feel bad. And that was the end of that.

The Gryffindors had to leave early for their first DADA class, since rumors were spreading like wildfire that Lockhart had set a quiz for the first class. The Hufflepuffs were leaking the questions near the greenhouses, and no one wanted to fail a test on the first class.

"What've we got this afternoon?" asked Harry, wolfing down the last bites of his baked potatoes.

"The schedule says Defense Against the Dark Arts, but I think Professor Flitwick has arranged for the Care of Magical Creatures class," said Hermione at once.

"Why,"demanded Terry, seizing her schedule, "have you outlined all Lockhart's lessons in little hearts?"

Hermione snatched the schedule back, blushing furiously.

* * *

Soon after the lunch, the Ravenclaws headed to a spot near the Forbidden Forest, where their Care of Magical Creatures demonstration class was supposed to happen.

Professor Silvanus Kettleburn was an odd little man. Not in the least because he only had one arm and half a leg, and taught his lesson sitting on an enchanted floating chair.

"Now listen up here ye lads and lassies. Yer Professor Flitwick told me to dial it down this class, so ye'll be seeing the Giant Squid today"

Which, in Harry's honest opinion was quite odd, since he never quite would have considered a colossal aquatic mutant tentacle monster to be 'dialed down'.

The class had proceeded to listen to an hour-long lecture about how the Giant Squid had come to live in the Hogwarts Black Lake, its dietary constrictions, and how it had been domesticated enough to help first-year students who might have toppled over into the lake on their way to the castle.

They had then headed to the Black lake pier, where they were been allowed to feed the squid and pat its tentacles. For some reason, the girls had really enjoyed that part of the class.

The class dispersed soon afterward, excitedly chatting about how fun the class was, and whether or not they'd be taking it in their third years. Harry made his excuses to Hermione and Terry, and headed to Professor Kettleburn's office. The next period was Divination demonstration, and then Muggle Studies afterward, and he'd heard enough about both the classes to not be interested in them at all.

Besides, he had a quest to complete. It was time to start collecting the teachers' signatures.

Professor Kettleburn only asked two questions to Harry once he saw who else had signed his slip.

The questions were, "Ye convinced Septima to sign?" and "Are ye sure ye want to do this? It'll be adding a load of extra work through yer Hogwarts years."

To both of those questions, Harry had replied in affirmative. A brief explanation of what his project was all about, and five minutes later, he had earned his first signature and a book about the Ministry's XXX Rating to help him with his project.

* * *

His next stop was Professor McGonagall, since her signature as the Deputy Headmistress was one of the most important ones. Her office, Harry noted, had a bunch of Quidditch memorabilia, which prompted him to mentally scratch out the lines about competing with Quidditch from the summary he was going to tell her.

Thankfully, the presentation went quite well. Professor McGonagall was quite well versed in Arithmancy, and had no trouble keeping up with his own calculations at all. She checked and double checked the calculations he had done before she said anything.

"Very well Mr. Potter," she said finally, "I will allow it. But understand that the permission will only remain probationary for this year. If I see any sort of slump in your grades, then I'll revoke my permission immediately. Understood?"

"Yes ma'am," Harry said, sitting stiff as a plank on his chair. McGonagall was objectively one of his favorite teachers, and her approval meant a lot to the twelve-year-old boy.

"Good. Understand this well Mr. Potter, that letting students as young as you start an extracurricular project is _very_ unusual. I trust you to not let me down."

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up due to repeated use!**

 **Entrepreneurship, Lv-2 (10%)**

 **This skill will reflect your mastery and acumen in the arts of entrepreneurship, including but not limited to pitching, creating, popularising and running an enterprise. This skill will eventually evolve to show the aspects of entrepreneurship you have mastered.**

 **Branches:**

 **Pitch: A distillation of an idea into a summary to hook an investor and make them more likely to invest their time, money, power or effort into your project.**

 **Percentage of Success - (15+Lv of Theatrics)%**

"Thank you, Professor," Harry happily said, as Professor McGonagall gave him a small smile and signed the slip under her name.

* * *

He had been lucky enough to find both Professor Sprout and Professor Flitwick in Professor Flitwick's office. They both simply heard his entire idea, looked over the Arithmancy projections he had shown Vector the previous night, complimented him for taking motivation to start on a high-level project early and signed his slip without a single word of discouragement.

"I know you can handle it Mr. Potter," Professor Sprout said, "You were second in your year in theory and first in the practical in your exams. And that's _in spite_ that awful Stone mess that happened last year."

"Not to mention that the fact that you've somehow managed to convince both Professor Vector _and_ Professor McGonagall speaks immensely in your favor." Professor Flitwick said, before adding, "If you do have any problems with your project, don't think twice about coming to me for help alright?"

"Of course Professor," Harry replied with a smile.

"Good. Now let's see. Who do you have left?" Professor Flitwick said, looking over his permission slip.

"Oh dear!" he muttered, sharing an uneasy look with Professor Sprout before looking at Harry with very sympathetic eyes, "You haven't gotten to Professor Lockhart yet have you?"

* * *

Their concern wasn't unwarranted.

As soon as Harry had knocked on the man's office door, he was immediately whisked into the office by an extremely overexcited Lockhart, who then proceeded to regale him with a blow by blow tale of how his entire first day of teaching had gone. Harry decided to be polite and give him five minutes before he blackmailed the signature out of him, and leaned back into his chair and tuned the man's voice out. The day had been very fast paced so far, and he needed the rest.

"…and then when I finished demonstrating how to take down a werewolf when you don't have your wand, I told them about the time I had to jump off a cliff in Nepal without a broom, and survived with only the help of levitation charms. Your friend, one Bean Thomas I think, dared me to perform it! And I agreed!"

" _What!?_ " Harry blurted out, having caught the last part.

"Isn't that amazing? I'll be demonstrating by jumping off the Astronomy Tower without a broom. Haven't fixed a date yet, but I think it'll be great for the PR. Gotta give the papers something to write about eh? Can't have them forget me while I'm here at Hogwarts!"

"PR? You're jumping off a tower for PR? You'll die!" Harry exclaimed in disbelief.

"Nonsense Harry! I'll be fine. Why, I remember Flitwick telling me in my Hogwarts days about a guy that levitated himself and manage to fly! Simple stuff!"

"That guy died"

"…he did?"

"Yep."

"Oh…Well. I'll be sure to put safety nets or something below the tower in case I fail. But imagine if I succeed. And even if I don't, I'd still be front page material for _days!_ "

"I…I don't understand. You're basically putting your entire life in danger just because of good PR" Harry said, feeling wondering genuinely whether the man was actually mad or not.

"Harry, Harry, Harry. Of course, you don't understand. You're new to this celebrity thing after all. For example, did you know that one of the best ways to show one's status or credibility really pretentiously is with a Latin motto?

"What are you even talking abou-"

Not even letting Harry finish his question, Lockhart steamrolled ahead. "In the old days, it conferred some level of prestige. These days, only smart people know Latin, so whoever still uses one is basically trying to show how much smarter, richer, and generally more awesome they are than usual people. It is a really great way to show your celebritiness to people."

Rubbing his head, Harry checked his wristwatch. Two more minutes. 'Just to be polite' he thought to himself and decided to humor the man. Sighing, he said, "Really? I didn't know that."

"But now you do!" Lockhart thundered jovially, "Its little things like this Harry. Little things that make a big celebrity. That's why I'm starting a new Wireless show about how to help up and coming celebrities like Quidditch stars or child prodigies. I've even had the introduction music made. Want to hear it?

Stifling another suffering sigh, Harry said, "You know what? Sure. Let's hear it."

"That's the spirit Harry," Lockhart merrily said as jogged over to a nearby Gramophone, robes flaring, and put on a new record. An oddly catchy jingle filled the air.

" _Pam pam pa pa pa pam pam pa pam pam pam papapapapapa pa PA PA PA PA PA! Hello Wizarding World! Welcome to Fame Theory!_ "

It was Lockhart's voice that voiced the last two lines in the jingle. Lockhart put the record back into the drawer he had pulled it from, and

"You like it, Harry? Fame Theory. That's my new show that's going to be coming on the Wireless. I'll even be broadcasting some shows from Hogwarts! Isn't it amazing? I'll be giving advice to young newly famous people who don't know how to manage their extremely public lives. And you know what? Bet it'd be a hoot to have _you_ on sometime!"

Harry's left eye developed a violent twitch.

Five seconds...Four seconds...Three...Two...One...Zero.

'I can't be arsed anymore about this' he thought, 'If he wants to die, he's welcome to die. I'm sure Dumbledore's reputation is more than enough to keep whatever plan Malfoy put into place at bay.'

"You know what Gilly?" Harry said out loud, "Enough of that. I don't want this to be very unpleasant, so let's make a fair deal. You sign this slip of mine. I appear on your show once. Fair enough?"

An eager glint appeared in Lockhart's eyes, which Harry immediately noticed, "And if you even _think_ of trying to extort something more in exchange for signing, you'll be going off to Azkaban by tomorrow's breakfast"

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up!**

 **Blackmailing Lv- 4 (20%)**

 **This is your ability to make another person do something you want by expressly using some sort of leverage against them. The higher the level, the more chance of success!**

 **(21 + Lv of Bullshitting)% chance of success, less based on how extreme the demand is.**

The glint disappeared, and Lockhart slumped in his seat.

"Good man Gilly."

* * *

Professor Aurora Sinistra was very accommodating. She signed the slip as soon as he mentioned that he wished to make something that would compete with Quidditch. Apparently, she wasn't all that much a fan of the sport either.

Harry was heading out of the Astronomy tower when suddenly, he caught sight of a familiar blond haired girl skipping her way towards him along the corridor.

Luna Lovegood noticed him, and a bright smile lit up her face as she skipped over to him. Harry prepared to introduce himself since the girl had never seen him without the invisibility cloak.

Her first words threw the plan right out of the window.

"Oh Hi Mr. Toadinger," she merrily said.

"Um…"

"Or do you want me to call you by your alias Harry?"

"…Yeah. I'd…I'd really appreciate that actually." Harry stuttered out, thrown for a total loop.

"It's a very good alias. Very much like that famous boy Harry Potter that killed the dragons. Nobody would suspect a thing. Very smart of you Mr. Toadinger."

"Um…"

"Did I tell you that your skin feels nice?" she said, raising her hand and rubbing it against his cheek.

"Er…"

"Oh well. I'm off. Goodbye Mr. Toadinger," she said as she patted his head and skipped off towards the Astronomy tower, leaving Harry feeling confused, and oddly enough, slightly molested.

After a moment of staring after the girl's disappearing back, Harry shook off the sheer mountain of confusion that Luna had dumped on him and looked at his list to see that only one name was left.

It was time to head to the dungeons.

* * *

Last year, Albus Dumbledore had put into action a plan that involved testing Harry to see whether he had the mentality of a dark wizard or not. That plan had ultimately ended _very_ poorly after Harry had almost died after a tussle with the Dark Lord Voldemort himself.

Professor Dumbledore had since then apologized to Harry, and had been very helpful towards him, which helped Harry lose some of the wariness he had towards the century-old wizard, but there was one more Professor who had known about the entire plan, and had not only gone along with it, but also looked him right in the eye, and manipulated the living shit out of him.

While Harry had forgiven both of the Professors for putting his life in danger, he was still a bit salty about the manipulation part.

After all, Harry Potter forgives, but he never forgets.

He looked down at the last name on his slip.

 _Severus Snape - Potions_

Oh well, better to do it sooner rather than later. He did want to get started on designing the game as soon as he could.

He knocked on the office door twice.

"Come in" came the patently flat voice of the Potions master. Harry pushed open the door and let himself into the office. The man was sitting at his desk, clothed fully in black.

"Can I help you Mr. Potter?" Professor Snape asked.

"Um…Yes, Professor" Harry said before he went on and explained his project much in the same way he had explained it to the other teachers.

The dour man patiently listened to the entire project summary. He took a moment after Harry finished his explanation before he spoke.

"So you intend to finish this before your seventh year?"

"I do professor," Harry replied.

"Ambitious," the professor said, "But not impossible. You've worked out a lot of the major kinks and issues by yourself, and Professor vector clearly trusts you with the Arithmancy. But there's one major issue that I'm seeing here."

"What's that sir?" Harry asked.

"It lacks strategy. Its current design only tells me that players will simply use their virtual creatures to fight it out, and whoever has the better creature will win. I would suggest adding another aspect that gives the weaker player an edge, and introduces more strategy into this…Game of yours. The ideas are all very interesting and well thought out, but there is a large room for improvement. I hope you take this for the sincere advice that it is. I am being very direct with you here Mr. Potter"

An almost involuntary scoff escaped Harry at that last statement, which he tried to pass off as a cough.

It didn't fool the keen-eared professor, who had heard the scoff.

"Have you developed some attitude problems during the summer break Mr. Potter? Or is there something you'd like to tell me?" he drawled. There was a sharp bite in his tone. It was clear that he didn't take very kindly to being mocked.

A spike of resentment flared, and Harry defiantly replied, "Yes there is sir. I was contemplating the sheer absurdity of the fact that _you_ are being direct."

"Oh?" he raised an eyebrow, "And whatever made you think that?"

"Oh, nothing much. Just how easily and willingly you lied and manipulated me into a _test_ that almost took my life."

The professor stared at Harry for a second before he sighed.

"I understand your resentment, Mr. Potter, but I never lied to you. Those actions were necessary"

"Oh yes," Harry snarked, " _Necessary._ That makes it so much better."

"I'd reign in the cheek Mr. Potter," he said in warning, "And the actions _were_ necessary"

"Necessary to quell your and Professor Dumbledore's paranoia that is," Harry shot back.

The Potions master looked at Harry for a second, before he spoke, "It wasn't paranoia. There are four people in the entire British Isles with Occlumency shields strong enough to be considered virtually unbreakable Mr. Potter. Three of them are masters of their chosen Arts, two of them are couple of the most dangerous wizards to ever live, and one of them almost wiped out the entire Wizarding Britain. The fourth one, is you."

Harry wondered where this was going.

"You have power Mr. Potter. Power even you don't fully realize yet. And when you are in a position similar to the Headmaster, you have to look out for the greater good. That was what he was doing when he decided to put you through the test, and ordered me to manipulate you into heading after the Stone. It proved to be harmful and dangerous to you, but it also proved to the Headmaster that you could be trusted to use your power responsibly and for the right reasons"

"And _you_? You just followed his orders? How do you trust that _he_ knows what is the greater good? How do you know that _your_ definition of greater good is same as him? Or that _his_ greater good isn't bad for everyone else?" Harry argued.

"Do not give me arguments about objective morality Mr. Potter. There is only one greater good that Albus Dumbledore believes in. The survival and protection of the wizarding kind. If he hadn't tested you last year, then he would have been risking an incredibly powerful dark wizard passing through Hogwarts undetected. One with the potential to do some real harm to the Wizarding Britain. While I do regret the fact that your life was put in danger, and I do think that the test could have been much less dangerous than it was, I do not disagree with the headmaster's intentions. You were an unknown and dangerous factor. You needed to be tested and you were."

Silence reigned in the office, as both teacher and student stared at each other, neither knowing what to say next.

It was a moment before Harry spoke again, "I can integrate potions into the game. Players could scan, and then use various potions, which can be used to heal the player's own creature and to slow down or harm the other player's creature. I can make it so that each real-life potion can only be scanned once. That should add enough of a strategy aspect to the game."

Snape silently looked at him, perhaps wondering whether to pursue the conversation that Harry had abruptly dropped, before he silently nodded, picked up his quill, and signed his name on the slip.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Convince all of the Hogwarts teachers to sign your permission slip**

 **Reward,**

 **10,000 Exp**

 **Legal permission to build your game**

Somehow, Harry wasn't feeling as happy about completing this quest that he'd thought he would.

* * *

Meanwhile, in a chamber deep underneath the castle of Hogwarts, deeper than the deepest of the dungeons, a massive serpent lay curled up and rested on the floor with its eyes closed, as a red-eyed girl moved in a circle around it waving her wand around and chanting a spell.

The Fidelius Charm was an extremely difficult, multifaceted and potent charm that could be used to conceal a secret inside an individual's soul.

One of the many interesting things about the Fidelius Charm was how malleable it was in terms of its capabilities. Lord Voldemort had dismissed the charm at first glance since apparently, its usage required complete trust in another person, a thought that was repulsive to the Dark Lord, and because he didn't have enough time in between the war to modify the spell and make something usable out of it.

Tom Marvolo Riddle, however, had much more time on his hands. However, he did have a couple of problems that he had to get through in order to use the charm the way he wanted to.

The first problem was that the charm usually demanded that the Caster and the Secret Keeper be two different individuals.

Tom had managed to bypass this without even trying.

At the moment, he was using _Lisa's_ magic to cast spells and do magic. But his _soul_ was still inside his diary. That meant that the spell recognized _Lisa_ as the caster and the Diary's soul as the secret keeper, making it possible for him to hide the secret inside his own soul in the diary.

He took extra care to voice the secret in Parseltongue to avoid any problems with his host.

But there was yet one more barrier that had to be bypassed before he could use the spell for what he needed to. And this one wasn't as easily solved. The spell wasn't designed for moving subjects.

However, he did have access to Lord Voldemort's knowledge and skills, which allowed him to do the difficult Arithmancy needed to get around that little problem.

" _Enchantre Fidelius!_ " the girl finally cast, and with a flash of turquoise light, the spell was complete.

He had successfully modified the Fidelius charm into the most powerful movable concealment ward ever to exist.

Standing back, he took a second to marvel at the work he had just done.

Linked to the beating heart of the ancient magical snake, which was its wardstone, the ward hid the serpent in the most complete of ways. Sight, sound, smell, and everything else. The serpent could be a centimeter in away from someone and they would never know it. Furthermore, the ward made it impossible for anybody to figure out what the Beast of the Chamber was. They could research their hearts out, but would never even realize that the Beast was a basilisk, despite any clues in front of them.

The beast itself had the choice to open its secondary translucent eyelids order to kill its target. Since the Basilisk's magic required physical eye contact, and the Fidelius was all mental, the two magics wouldn't impede each other at all.

The ward didn't come without its weaknesses, but it was still worth it.

Suddenly remembering something, Riddle turned to the basilisk and asked the question that he had on his mind.

" _You do still have that weakness for the roosters crying don't you?_ " he hissed at the Slytherin serpent.

" _Unfortunately so_ " it hissed back.

" _Very well then_ " he hissed, before he cast a deafness curse on the massive serpent, and tweaked it to allow only a Parseltongue's voice to pass through it, protecting the basilisk against its biggest weakness.

" _And now, King of Serpents, you shall travel through the halls of Hogwarts unhindered, and honor the will of Salazar Slytherin's blood._ "

The massive snake bowed its head slightly, acknowledging its mission.

" _What is your command heir?_ " the Basilisk hissed.

" _Avoid people in groups and do not harm the students until I command you to,_ " he instructed.

If people died in large groups, then that would lead to the school closing down and Auror attention, both of whom would be incredibly detrimental to his plans.

Then there were the weaknesses in the modified Fidelius.

It would not function properly if more than _seven_ people would notice that something was off around them, and actively try to look for what was off. That meant that if a group of people with more than seven people were to see one of their number drop dead, then they would start looking for what caused the death, and the spell would shatter.

This happened because the spell had to sacrifice its structural strength to compensate for the mobility, but in Riddle's opinion, it was well worth it. The basilisk knew hundreds of secret passages into the pipes in Hogwarts, and could easily avoid crowds.

Putting Lisa's wand back into her bag, he commanded the Basilisk to follow closely behind him. It was time to let the beast reacquaint itself with the Halls it hadn't seen in decades.

He walked out of the chamber through the main entrance and rode the basilisk up the pipe which lead out into the girl's bathroom. Dismounting the basilisk in the bathroom, he walked out, with the beast slithering closely behind him.

Barely a quiet second of walking had passed when suddenly, he heard a cat's yowl from behind him. Almost instantly, he felt the Basilisk's head move, and the yowl cut off with a start.

Looking back towards the way the sound had come from, he saw the cat lying on the floor, looking stiff as a board. He walked over to the cat.

A grin spread across his face as he realized what had happened.

The grimy looking cat must have had some immensely high amount of luck, because it had only caught sight of the basilisk's glare indirectly through the reflection of the water on the floor, and gotten _petrified_ instead of dying.

His initial intention when he'd decided to bring the Basilisk outside was to test if the Fidelius was working properly or not, and to let the Basilisk get reacquainted with the corridors that it hadn't seen in many years. But this turn of events wasn't entirely unwelcome.

His mind worked at breakneck speeds as he modified his plans. This would be the first step of his mission. A suitably eerie first warning to spread panic and discord amongst the students and the staff, before he began his true plan to drive the old coot from the school.

Yes. This would do finely.

He hung the cat by its tail from the nearest torch bracket and conjured up some red paint, which he used to daub a single message on the wall in foot-long letters.

 _The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir beware._

* * *

At the moment when this nefarious plan was being realized at Hogwarts, two lower level Law Enforcement officials were chatting their way through their boring midnight shift at the Ministry of Magic. The clock gave a chime as it struck two o' clock in the morning, and their conversation shifted to office gossip.

"Did you hear what happened to Vance and Tonks a couple of days ago?" Benji asked his friend Stewie.

"On the day they brought in that child beater muggle?" Stewie asked.

"Yeah. The fellas over at Mungo's reckon it was a lot worse than just beating. They reckon it was some messed up shit mate. They're collecting evidence for the trial next week, but I reckon it's the Kiss for that bastard."

"Good riddance," Stewie said darkly, "That poor girl. It must have been so hard…"

"Yeah…Well, she's in a better place now. I heard that she got all healed up by the Mungo mind healers, and couple o' muggleborns took her in yesterday. She'll be fine I reckon. But enough about that. You haven't even heard the _real_ interesting thing"

"What's that?"

"It wasn't Vance and Tonks who took the guy down, it was some sort of hooded guy that nobody knows."

"So? Maybe it was some wizard playing vigilante. That's not really new, is it? What's interesting about that?"

"Well…I'm not supposed to tell this to anyone, but I heard this from Barry, who heard it from Olivia, who heard it from Vance herself. You know how Tonks was a victim of a kidnapping last year?" Benji asked in a hushed voice.

"Yeah. I read about it in the public archives. She said in her statement that some guy used wandless magic to torch the place and save her," Stewie replied. It wasn't really uncommon for Aurors and Auror trainees to have messed up pasts and nothing really escaped the DMLE grapevine.

"The guy she described, the one that saved her?" Benji said, with the air of sharing some great secret, " _Exact_ same description Vance gave for this man. The healers reckoned that she had some hallucinations, but now Vance has seen him too. The guy is real"

"What!? No way! That kind of wandless magic…I doubt even Moody could do something like that. No way that's true!"

"It is," Benji insisted, "And you know what's more weird and shocking? The healer who patched up the muggle bastard found that the man had almost drowned, gotten his head bashed in, and broken eighty bones. Yet not only the house was _entirely_ untouched and unharmed, no magic had been cast in the house"

" _No_ magic?"

"None. This guy is a professional. Not even a single trace that he was ever there. He either somehow managed to find an untraceable wand, or did the entire thing wandlessly. The only thing we even know about him is that he has a yew wand."

"So? Has anyone run through the wand records yet? To check who has yew wands in active use?"

"Yeah. Vance did that. And you know what she found?"

"What?"

"There aren't many people with yew wands within the last century mate. Less than half a dozen. Vance has gone and checked most of those. Couple of dead people, whose wands are with them in their graves. A couple of current users in the ministry and couple of students in Hogwarts. There is only one wand in Britain that's made of yew and is missing. It's a chap named Tom Riddle. Been missing for decades now. He's even listed in the records as assumed dead."

"So she found nothing?" Stewie asked.

"Nothing in the records. But…people are saying something else. Something troubling"

"What? Stop with the suspense already!"

"Alright alright. Listen. It's not on the wand records, but I asked some Aurors from the last war, and they remember it. They remember another yew wand that was never found after its owner died. You know who it belonged to?"

"Who?"

"You Know Who."

"I don't know who. Who?"

"No, you bloody idiot. The dark wizard. You know Who!"

"That You Know Who?!"

"Exactly! Some are saying that he's back or something. They're not saying it publicly, or to anyone that matters, but they're saying it."

"You believe them?"

"Not really. I reckon it's some foreign wizard or something who's trying to do some good. But you know how times are. You never know what to believe. There've always been people who've believed that You Know Who isn't really dead. Only…gone for now. It's all pretty confusing."

"So who'd you reckon the guy is?"

"Who knows? But I don't think it's You Know Who."

"…Can we just call him He Who Must Not Be Named from now on?"

* * *

 **Wrote in Snape with that meaty dialogue about what a danger Harry could mean...definitely proud of that little line. What do you think about Tom's move to use the Fidelius? And do let me know if you liked the chapter or not. Suggestions, opinions, and questions are welcome as usual.**


	28. Book-II:A Lonely World

Chapter 8:

Harry Potter was feeling slightly uneasy.

His argument with Professor Snape about an hour ago had driven into him that his powers, while a secret for the most part, hadn't gone unnoticed by the people around him. Terry had once mentioned to him in a casual conversation that he often felt that Harry was holding back in class. Although the perception of him as a prodigal kid who tried to hold himself back to blend in with his friends wasn't anywhere near to the truth, it was still more than he'd ever thought his Ravenclaw friend would have ever noticed.

He had to be more careful with hiding his Gamer powers.

With so many forces out there that were or _could_ become hostile to him, including Voldemort, he had to focus on making himself less of a target. Dumbledore had only known about his shields and ended up almost killing him all because he thought that he _could_ be dangerous. If anyone knew about the _true_ extent of his powers and the things he could do, he would skyrocket to the top of every single dangerous wizard's hit list.

Pushing those thoughts out of his mind and looking down at his cup, he realized that the ice cream he'd claimed for dessert had melted, and there were no more bowls of ice cream on the table left unclaimed. After making sure Hermione and Terry were busy chatting away about the problems they thought the Divination classes had, he whispered under his breath, "Could I possibly have another bowl of ice cream?"

The ice cream bowl in front of him vanished for a split second with an almost inaudible pop and then reappeared with some freshly served vanilla ice cream. Harry grinned. There were some great advantages in having somebody you knew in the kitchen.

"Thanks, Dobby. You're the best," he muttered under his breath.

The bowl disappeared for a split second again before it reappeared with some lovely chocolate syrup on top of the scoops of vanilla ice cream. With a grin, Harry dove into the delicious dessert.

Fifteen minutes later, when he only had a spoonful of ice cream left, the doors to the Great Hall slammed open and Argus Filch, the caretaker, came running into the hall looking incredibly distressed. Despite his enraged expression, Harry was shocked to notice that he had tears in his eyes.

The unpleasant man walked faster than Harry had ever seen him walk on his way to the High Table, where he spoke with the Headmaster in angry whispers for a second. His voice seemed to be loud enough for the students closest to the High Table to catch what was being said, but from Harry's spot at the middle of the table, nothing was audible.

Before he could ask around a bit about what was going on, the Headmaster abruptly stood up.

"Students, stay inside the Hall! Prefects, the Hall doors are locked. Do not, under any circumstances, open them. Professors follow me! There has been an incident," he said before he promptly followed a clearly devastated Filch right out of the doors, which swung shut and locked with a click the moment the last Professor left.

There was a momentary beat of silence, before the Great Hall erupted in a giant mess of noise and chaos.

The Slytherins were, for some reason, the loudest. Harry watched as Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott, and the other Slytherins repeatedly slammed their goblets onto the table with wide grins and shouted something indecipherable at the top of their voice. The Slytherin prefects were making attempts at stopping the noisemakers but were pathetically unsuccessful.

"What's going on?" Harry asked Hermione in a loud voice over the din.

"I don't know!" Hermione yelled back, "But the Slytherins are yelling something about some sort of Chamber!"

"What's that!?" Harry asked, faintly remembering reading something about it ages ago. Upon seeing Hermione shrug, he turned to Terry, "Oi Terry! What's this Chamber thing the Slytherins are on about?"

"I don't know!" the black haired boy replied through the din, "But some of the others are saying that it's some sort of pureblood legend that the Slytherins believe in."

Harry ransacked his mind for anything that would match that description but found nothing. His repertoire of knowledge focused around the study of magic, and he had never really gotten around to learning about legends and stories that were prevalent in the wizarding world.

"Let's follow them!" a third year Ravenclaw yelled from beside them, interrupting his thought process, "Let's follow the staff! We need to see if the Chamber is really open! Don't let the Professors hide this from us! Open the door Prefects!"

This was met with a roar of support from the Slytherin side of the room, as well as a lot of Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff. Even Gryffindor joined in. By the looks of it, half of them knew what this Chamber was, half didn't, and _none_ of them liked the idea of having stuff of this magnitude hidden from them.

The roar soon condensed to a repeated chant, of "FOLLOW THEM! FOLLOW THEM! FOLLOW THEM! UNLOCK THE DOOR!"

The prefects, who were standing in front of the High Table in a line were keeping the food that the students were throwing at them at bay using shield charms, while they repeatedly refused to open the door, which could only be opened by a special password that only the prefects knew.

The door would only open when all the prefects said the password together, which was why the efforts of the few students trying to force the door open were futile.

Harry watched, wondering whether or not he should interfere, as the students relentlessly kept trying to convince the prefects, until one by one, they started giving in.

Ravenclaw prefects gave in first, then Slytherins, and then the Hufflepuffs, until the only prefects that were left standing their ground were the six Gryffindor prefects. And they were showing no signs of backing off.

"No! No! No! Absolutely not! The Headmaster has expressly prohibited to let you out!" Percy Weasley insisted vigorously, "What if it's some sort of dangerous emergency? We don't know what it was about!"

"Bullshit Weasley!" yelled a Slytherin prefect, "You heard the same thing that we did! It's about the Chamber of Secrets! Stop trying to suck up to the Headmaster! You becoming Head Boy is _not_ as important as the school covering up something as big as this!"

"That is _not_ what this is about! This is about all of you overreacting and turning into a _mob_ over something as _baseless_ as Filch whispering about some Chamber to the Headmaster! We're the prefects Nomques! We can't just disobey the Headmaster's orders!"

Harry's curiosity was piqued. Whatever this Chamber legend was, many students seemed to believe that the teachers would cover it up or something.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Convince Percy to let the students follow the Professors!**

 **Reward,**

 **1,000 Exp**

 **Failure,**

 **Loss of reputation amongst fellow students**

 **YES/NO?**

Not the most rewarding quest, but indeed, quite relevant to the situation. Pressing yes, Harry quickly used Gamer's Mind to find a possible solution to the stand-off.

He stood up, and loudly said, "Then don't!"

The hall fell silent, and Harry continued, "You can tell the Professor that some of the students cast one of those Jelly Brain jinxes on you and forced you to say the password. The jinx is taught in the fourth year, so they won't be able to pin down which house or person did it. Nobody will lose points, we'll be able to see if they're trying to hide anything or not, and the Prefects won't be blamed at all."

There was a moment of silence, in which they could almost see Percy physically struggling with the idea of defying someone he believed to be an authority figure, before he finally sighed.

"Fine" he grudgingly said, "But no running or trampling each other. Walk at a sedate pace."

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Convince Percy to let the students follow the Professors!**

 **Reward,**

 **1,000 Exp**

Ping!

 **Skill has levelled up due to clever use!**

 **Politics Lv- 3 (20%)**

 **This is your ability to manoeuvre in political situations by methods of persuasion, blackmail, guile, and manipulation. The higher the level, the more chance of success!**

 **(Lv of Lying + Lv of Bullshitting)% chance of success, less based on how extreme the motive is.**

Harry waved away the screen, happy to get some quick exp and a level up to a pretty low-level skill. The fact that this counted as a political situation quite intrigued him as well.

When he refocused on Percy, he saw that the prefect was asking for something, "Did one of you catch what spot Filch was talking about?"

"The second floor Girl's bathroom!" a Hufflepuff answered loudly, and soon, the prefects opened the door, and the students headed out and up the Grand Staircase towards the second floor.

"Good one Harry!" Dean said, wading his way over to them through the crowd with Ron in tow.

"Yeah" Ron exclaimed enthusiastically, "I don't think I'd have ever thought that _Percy_ would agree to disobey Professor Dumbledore's orders!"

"This Chamber business does seem pretty serious doesn't it? Any idea what it is?" Terry asked as Hermione looked on curiously.

Ron shrugged, "No idea mate. I only remember the name because Bill once told me a story about some sort of room that Slytherin built for himself."

'Room? A Founder's Room? Slytherin's Room?' Harry mused

 **Due to making a logical connection, take +1 Wis!**

Harry waved away the screen, storing away that fact for later use and refocusing on his friends.

"Maybe the Slytherins have heard some more detailed version of the story or something? We should probably look it up in the library," Hermione suggested.

"Agreed," Harry said, looking at Hermione "Even if this is a false alarm or something, I reckon we should read up on some wizarding legends and stories. We've been focused too much on the academic aspect of things and not enough on the cultural side."

"Well, you can forget about this being a false alarm. Look!" whispered Dean from his other side.

Harry looked away from Hermione and towards what Dean was looking at.

Something was shining on the wall ahead. They let the crowd guide their path as they slowly approached the spot, where the teachers were standing around a sobbing kneeling Filch, some of them staring at the writing, some occasionally waving a wand at it.

Foot-high words had been daubed on the wall between two windows, shimmering in the light cast by the flaming torches.

 _The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the heir beware._

"What's that thing…hanging underneath?" said Ron, a slight quiver in his voice.

As they edged nearer, Terry almost slipped. There was a large puddle of water on the floor. Harry grabbed him and kept him on his feet as the entire group of hundreds of students slowly inched towards the message, eyes fixed on a dark shadow beneath it.

Mrs. Norris, the caretaker's cat, was hanging by her tail from the torch bracket. She was stiff as a board, her eyes wide and staring.

It was at that moment that Professor McGonagall finally noticed the massive group of students. " _What_ are yo-"

"It's alright Minerva. Let them be," Professor Dumbledore said, saving the student body from the Transfiguration Professor's wrath. He gently detached Mrs. Norris from the torch bracket and laid her on the floor beside a blubbering Filch before kneeling down and prodding and poking the cat with his wand.

"Is she dead?" Ron whispered to Harry, but he might as well have said it out loud, for the whisper echoed loudly from one end of the hall to the other, clearly audible. Filch let out a loud moan of despair, making Ron wince.

"No she's not Mr. Weasley," Dumbledore gently said, pocketing his wand and standing up.

"She's not!?" Filch choked out, his voice almost pitifully dripping with hope, "Then why is she all…all frozen and stiff?"

"That…will require some more time to determine…Gilderoy, would you mind terribly if we were to use your office for a second?" the Headmaster asked the blond haired man, who, miraculously, hadn't said a word until now.

"Of course, Headmaster. Just upstairs…please feel free."

"Thank you," said Dumbledore, "Come with me, Argus."

The silent crowd parted to let them pass. Lockhart, looking excited and important, hurried after Dumbledore and so did Professors McGonagall and Snape, while the other Professors began herding back the students.

Dumbledore's voice suddenly echoed through the corridor again, "Mr. Potter, would you come with us please?"

Meeting his friends' confused looks with his own equally confused one, Harry shrugged, and pushed his way through the crowd and caught up with the group of Professors. He'd intended to stay back and Observe the entire scene, but apparently, that wasn't going to happen.

"Is there anything I can do Professor?" he asked the Headmaster, keeping up with his purposeful stride with a slight jog.

"Indeed Harry. We will talk after we reach the good Professor's office."

As they entered the darkened office, Lockhart lit the candles on his desk and stood back. Dumbledore lay Mrs. Norris on the polished surface and began to examine her. Harry sank into a chair outside the pool of candlelight, watching.

The tip of Dumbledore's crooked nose was barely an inch from Mrs. Norris's fur. He was looking at her closely through his half-moon spectacles, his long fingers gently prodding and poking. Professor McGonagall was bent almost as close, her eyes narrowed. Snape loomed behind them, half in shadow, and seemed to have divided his time between staring at Harry and giving baleful glares in the direction of Lockhart, who was hovering around all of them, making suggestions and being generally irritating.

"It was definitely a curse that froze her up…probably the Vestigiatitis Torture Curse…I've seen it used many times. Turns the entire body vestigial…Very sad you see.

Lockhart's comments were punctuated by Filch's dry sobs as he lay slumped in a nearby chair, unable to look at Mrs. Norris, his face in his hands, muttering in between his sobs about how some students must have done this. Much as he detested Filch, Harry couldn't help feeling a bit sorry for him.

Dumbledore was now muttering incantations in…

Ping!

 **Recommended Language: Swahili**

 **Activate All Speak: Swahili?**

 **YES/NO**

Harry pressed yes, but there was little he could gather from the series of random and fast strings of words and incantations, so he deactivated it soon after.

Dumbledore continued muttering spells under his breath and tapping Mrs. Norris with his wand but nothing happened. She continued to look as though she had undergone a process for taxidermy. Lockhart continued to ramble on about some nonsense as the photographs of himself on the walls all nodded in agreement as he talked. One of them had forgotten to change out of its bathrobes.

At last, Dumbledore straightened up.

"She has been Petrified," said Dumbledore, "But how, I cannot say…which is why I need your assistance, Harry.

"And what could Mr. Potter possibly do to diagnose this mysterious ailment?" Professor McGonagall asked, eyeing Harry curiously.

"More than you think Minerva. Mr. Potter, could I possibly trouble you to call for your avian friend? I'm afraid Fawkes is indisposed at the moment." Dumbledore requested.

Eyeing the Professors in the room, Harry nodded, before he poured some mana into his voice, and called for his phoenix friend, "Hedwig!"

With a spectacular burst of flame, Hedwig materialized above them and flew down onto Harry's shoulder. Professor McGonagall was downright staring, almost as if she hadn't believed before this that Harry had a phoenix, and Professor Snape just looked slightly constipated. Lockhart gave him a grin and a thumbs up from behind them.

"Thank you, Harry. And hello Miss Hedwig" Dumbledore greeted, receiving a chirp of greeting back, "This is Mrs. Norris. She has been petrified by some unknown means that I am unable to determine on my own. Would you mind terribly if I asked you to tell me if she smells unpleasant to you?"

Hedwig sang a small note of acquiesce, before she flapped her wings and flew over to the desk, where she hopped over to Mrs. Norris and brought her beak close to the petrified animal. Filch's sobs quietened, and the entire room waited with bated breath to see if what would happen.

The moment Hedwig took a breath, she jerked back with a loud unpleasant caw, before she burst into flames and reappeared on Harry's shoulder. Harry gently rubbed her back, trying to comfort the clearly disturbed bird as he looked at Dumbledore questioningly.

"I must apologize for that Miss Hedwig," Dumbledore said to the albino firebird, before he turned back to Mrs. Norris's body, "We can eliminate any student from suspicion now. There is absolutely no chance that any student could have done this."

"But what happened Headmaster?" Snape asked from the shadows.

"Phoenixes have very poor tolerance for the smell of the effects of purely dark magic. It is not something humans can smell. Phoenixes can only sense very high amounts of it, and when they do smell it, it is very repulsive to them" Dumbledore said, summoning an apple for Hedwig and handing it to Harry, who held it as Hedwig gingerly nibbled on it.

"So what does this mean now Albus?" McGonagall asked, not once taking her eyes off Hedwig.

"That means," Dumbledore said, "that this is some very dark magic. Fortunately, we do have a cure that can counter any form of Petrifaction, no matter how dark it is."

"Mandrakes," Snape said, comprehending what the Headmaster was saying. Harry immediately recognized that as the name of the plant which Dean, Ron and Neville were talking about this morning.

"Indeed Severus. A Mandrake Restorative Draught would easily restore Mrs. Norris. Professor Sprout's Mandrakes should be reaching maturity by New Year's," Dumbledore said before patting Filch's back, "Cheer up Argus! We'll have Mrs. Norris up and chasing students very in no time at all"

Feeling a bit awkward, Harry asked, "Er…should I leave now headmaster?"

"Ah yes yes," Dumbledore said, "You can indeed. However Harry, could you please drop off Mrs Norris at the Hospital Wing before you head back to your dorms? The Professors and I have a few things to discuss. Here, I'll write a note for you"

Harry nodded, as Dumbledore quickly penned down a note for him.

"Remember to tell Madam Pomfrey to contact her friend at the Menagerie and make Mrs. Norris as comfortable as possible" he added.

Gingerly taking the stiff body of Mrs Norris from a hesitant Filch, Harry grabbed onto Hedwig's tail feathers and disappeared from the room with a burst of flame. The fire receded from his vision after a moment, and he found himself just outside the doors of the Hospital wing.

"Why don't you head back to the dorms Hedwig, I'll be there in a few minutes," Harry said.

Hedwig nipped Harry's ear, before she flapped into the air and flamed away, leaving Harry with a petrified old cat and his thoughts.

This petrifaction wasn't an accident. That much was self-evident. It almost definitely had something to do with whatever plan Malfoy put in motion. It was becoming more and more apparent that this heir person was that someone that Malfoy had sent to the school.

Looking down at the miserable cat, Harry wondered if he could help the animal.

Putting his hand on the cat's abdomen, Harry made his mana pool into his hands, making it glow from the inside, before he muttered, "Healing Touch."

A bunch white light started from his hand, but unlike the time he'd used it with Anny, the light didn't ripple across the cat at all, instead continuously pooling in his hand. It continued to do so for a few more seconds before it gave up and dissolved back into his own mana.

Ping!

 **ERROR! : Healing Touch Unsuccessful!**

 **Primary Error Code: Unknown**

 **Secondary Error Code: Status Unmatched!**

 **Patient status classified as BEAST. Required status for skill usage classified as BEING.**

 **Recommendation: Usage of Healing Skill**

Harry stared at the new screen, slightly flummoxed. This was new! He couldn't heal animals with this power! Why!?

Shaking his head, Harry decided it must have something to do with his Healing Touch skill having come from human-made magic and his Healing skill having come from a unicorn, before he used Healing on the cat.

Ping!

 **You are attempting to heal somebody with several ailments! Please chose one to heal:**

 **Broken Fibula**

 **Petrifaction**

Harry selected the Petrifaction, and to his utmost annoyance and infuriation a familiar window popped up.

 **WARNING: Petrifaction has status Ancient Magic on it, increasing cost of removal by 3000MP.**

 **Total Cost - 3300MP**

Harry stared at the window in shock before pulling up his own stats.

 **HP - 1675/1675**

 **MP - 1425/1425**

Oh no no no no…this was bad…this was very bad.

With his current rate of growth, he would need more than twenty level ups before he could cure this, even with the help of his Wardstone Perk.

If this Petrifaction thing happened to some student, then the only way to help them would be the potion. This was bad.

Pushing these thoughts to the back of his mind, Harry opened his Mage Sight. If he couldn't help somebody who was petrified, then the least he could do was diagnose them.

What he saw, caused him even further unrest.

There was mana in the cat's body, but it wasn't flowing as normal and healthy mana should have been. Instead, it was entirely frozen. Completely still at every single point. Unmoving, unresponsive…petrified.

The curse, or whatever it was, went much deeper than any spell he'd ever seen. Harry finally understood why his Healing Touch had shown that Unknown Primary Error.

The Healing Touch skill worked by traveling through the flowing eddy currents of the patient's mana and using the patient's _own_ mana to completely heal them, which was why the skill didn't take any mana from _Harry_ as cost.

But here…here the patient's mana was frozen…vestigial…useless.

This Petrifaction was beyond his ability to heal. At least for now.

Harry sighed, and was about to switch the Mage sight off, when he suddenly caught sight of something and stopped.

In glowing letters, invisible to any eyes except those gifted with Mage Sight, there was written a message on the paper note that the Headmaster had handed him, which was still clutched in his hand.

 _Keep an eye on Draco Malfoy_

And in one striking moment Harry realized that he'd never even _considered_ the possibility that Draco Malfoy knew of whatever plan that his father had cooked up. While it seemed very unlikely that Lucius Malfoy was the type to involve, or even trust his son, the thought was not outside the realm of possibility.

Dumbledore, who knew that Harry did occasionally talk to Draco, must have decided to tell him to keep an eye on him since a fellow student talking to the younger Malfoy would set off lot less alarm bells than it would if the _Headmaster_ did it.

He promptly decided to keep an eye on the Malfoy heir, and headed into the Hospital Wing, where he handed over the petrified Mrs. Norris to the matron, who, after some questioning, let Harry go.

It was getting late, Harry thought as he walked towards the Ravenclaw tower. The rest of the guys would probably have fallen asleep by now. If he were being perfectly honest with himself, he was getting a bit sleepy too. It had been a _long_ first day.

He had a couple of plans to test out tomorrow, which could possibly help in case any student fell prey to this crazy plan Malfoy had cooked up.

Harry idly wondered whether the Room of Requirement was any good at finding grown Mandrakes.

* * *

The next morning, Harry realized that the Room of Requirements was very good at finding grown Mandrakes.

Rotten ones.

After a bunch of digging around and asking the Room for any information on the Room itself, Harry learned that the Room of Requirements worked on the basis of Transfiguration, and could only _create_ non-organic andnon-magicall things. Any organic or magical object that it furbished to its user wasn't created, but summoned from somewhere that Harry found no information about.

In short, NO food.

Thus when he asked for grown Mandrakes, the room presented him with the only Mandrakes it could summon from its storage. Old, rotten and useless ones.

So Harry waved goodbye to that idea as it went down the drain.

Bugger.

Furthermore, his second idea, which was to contact Nicholas via Hedwig this morning, also went down the drain.

By lunch, Nicholas sent Hedwig back with a letter, saying that there were no above ground and legal sources that were selling Mandrakes, since they weren't in season anywhere on the planet.

Further worsening the situation was the fact that Nicholas and Perenelle had cut all access to their shadier contacts before faking their deaths. So the magical equivalent of the black market was out of his reach as well. Nicholas had moreover added that it was highly unlikely that Mandrakes would be available even on the black market until the next January.

Bugger.

All that was he could do now, was to make the Game give him some sort of Botanical skill and help Professor Sprout's batch grow faster, which wasn't going to be easy since the game was a sarcastic little bitch when it came to respecting Harry's wishes about what abilities he should get.

Bugger.

After getting buggered thrice on the same day, Harry decided that he would give his brain and arse some much-needed rest, and headed to the History of Magic with the Ravens and the Gryffindors for a good hour of nap-time.

But even that small relief was not to going to be granted to him.

Halfway through the class, Hermione put up her hand, much to the ghostly Professor's surprise. Apparently, her early morning library research about the Chamber of Secrets hadn't been as fulfilling as she would have liked it to be.

"Miss?" Binns asked, acknowledging Hermione.

"Granger, Professor. I was wondering if you could tell us anything about the Chamber of Secrets," said Hermione in a clear voice.

Dean, who had been sitting with his mouth hanging open, gazing out of the window, jerked out of his trance, the Patil twins simultaneously looked like two meerkats that had caught sight of something of interest and Neville's elbow slipped off his desk.

Professor Binns blinked.

"My subject is History of Magic, Miss Gangrene," he said in his dry, wheezy voice. "I deal with facts, not myths" He cleared his throat with a small noise like chalk s!-ping and continued, "In September of that year, a subcommittee of Sardinian sorcerers…"

He stuttered to a halt. Hermione's hand was waving in the air again.

"Miss Grant?"

"Please, sir, but don't legends always have a basis in some fact or the other?"

Professor Binns was looking at her as if he'd seen a ghost. Harry was sure no student had ever interrupted him like this before, alive or dead.

"Well," said Professor Binns slowly, looking more awake than Harry had ever seen him before, "yes, one could argue that, I suppose." He peered at Hermione as though he had never seen her properly before. But the whole class was now hanging on Professor Binns's every word. Even the most unobservant of students could could have told you that he was completely thrown by such an unusual show of interest.

"Oh, very well," he said slowly, racking his ghostly memory, that somehow seemed to have perfect recall of all things Historical, but couldn't remember a student's name, "Let me see…the Chamber of Secrets…You all know, of course, that Hogwarts was founded over a thousand years ago by the four witches and wizards. Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin. They built this castle together, far from prying Muggle eyes, for it was an age when magic was feared by common people, and witches and wizards suffered much persecution."

He paused, gazed blearily around the room, and continued.

"For a few years, the founders worked in harmony together, seeking out youngsters who showed signs of magic and bringing them to the castle to be educated. But then a rift began to grow between Slytherin and the others. Slytherin wished to be more selective about the students admitted to Hogwarts. He believed that magical learning should be kept within all-magic families. He disliked taking students of Muggle parentage, believing them to be untrustworthy. After a while, there was a serious argument on the subject between Slytherin and Gryffindor, and Slytherin left the school."

Professor Binns paused again, pursing his lips, "Reliable historical sources tell us this much," he said. "But these honest facts have been obscured by the fanciful legend of the Chamber of Secrets. The story goes that Slytherin built a going-away present to the school in the form of a secret chamber that could only be opened by his true heir. This "Chamber of Secrets" contains a monster that only the Heir of Slytherin can control and that, once released, would purge the school of all those born of Muggles."

There was an uneasy silence as he finished telling the story. Professor Binns looked faintly annoyed.

"The whole thing is complete nonsense, of course," he said, "Naturally, the school has been searched for evidence of such a chamber, many times, by the most learned witches and wizards. It does not exist."

What followed was by far the most active discussion of facts and logic that Harry had ever seen happen in this classroom. Seamus had argued that nobody _could_ have found the Chamber unless they were the heir and Padma argued the use of dark magic or some sort of password that only the heir would know, both of which Binns refuted.

Hermione had asked one final question about why this legend wasn't more well known.

To that, the haggled looking ghost replied, "It's a fairy tale Miss Granger. A bad one at that. Why would it be more popular?" before he shut down any and all discussion about the topic and went back to his lecture.

* * *

The next couple of weeks passed without any major incident. For the first few days, the school could talk of little else but the attack on Mrs. Norris.

Filch kept it fresh in everyone's minds. When he wasn't guarding the scene of the crime, he was skulking red- eyed through the corridors, lunging out at unsuspecting students and trying to put them in detention for things like "breathing loudly' and "looking smug."

Late evening on the nineteenth of September, which was a Saturday, Harry found himself nibbling on his food, watching as Terry and Hermione raced to finish their six and a half feet of Potions compositions for Monday's class.

"Harry! Why aren't you doing your compositions!" Hermione exclaimed, when she looked up from her parchment.

"It's already done," Harry replied. He'd finally gotten another level up to his Calligraphy during the essay as well. The skill now sat as follows,

 **Calligraphy, Lv-11 (21%)**

 **You can write with any writing instrument with your mastery of the art of script. This skill can make a significant difference in runes, arithmancy and other forms of written ritual magic.**

 **Special moves:**

 **Runomancy attack: Runic Burst**

 **An attack which upon activation unleashes a number of rune amplified spells on your foe. The spells are chosen randomly out of your combat spell arsenal. The number of spells is only limited by the amount of times you choose to attack your enemy or your mana pool.**

 **Attack- (Number of spells x Wis)% more damage + Dex**

 **Cost- (Cost of wandless magic x 50%), Cooldown period +5 seconds for every spell**

It wasn't anything revolutionary, but at least it was a level up.

"What?! When?!" Terry exclaimed aghast, "Snape gave us the assignment yesterday evening!"

"Yesterday evening," Harry said, picking up a goblet and sipped on it.

"Smug little overachiever," Terry crossly muttered.

"Oh sorry Terry, I didn't hear you there. What was that?" Harry asked mockingly.

"Nothing at all Mr. _Potter,_ " Terry replied in an overly saccharine voice.

"Knock it off you two. Terry, get back to the essay. We still have a conclusion to write," Hermione said, before she re-inked her quill and dived back into her writing.

"Well," Harry said, placing down his goblet, "I'm off to sleep. I'll catch you guys tomorrow at breakfast."

They acknowledged his goodbye with some obscure gestures and hand waves that Harry took to mean that they would see him then as well, before he headed out of the hall and towards the Ravenclaw Tower.

However, he wasn't going to sleep. Tonight was a special night. Something he'd worked hard for.

Reaching the tower, he simply muttered the word Duro, which was the keyword to turn the bed curtains solid and make sure that they wouldn't open for anybody except the user.

Having made sure that his dorm mates would be thinking that he was asleep, Harry fed Hedwig some chocolate, let her fly into his enlarged robe pocket, and dropped into an ID. Once in the isolation of the red-tinged dimension, Harry used Unicorn Boost to run all the way to the seventh floor, where he popped out of the ID and used his thoughts to mold the Room of Requirements into a room of his preferences before he let himself in.

The Room had taken the form of a large barren chamber devoid of anything but a few tables with a basketful of feathers and a jug of water beside it.

Harry let Hedwig out of his pocket before he walked over to the table and dipped a single feather into the water. He pulled out his wand and started what was hopefully going to be his last nightly exercise on this particular spell.

" _Fulguris_ " he intoned, and a tiny thread of wireform lightning joined the wand's tip to the feather, and instead of incinerating it or completely burning it up as Harry had done the last few times he'd practiced the spell, left the feather only a bit singed.

Once more, he thought to himself.

He dipped another feather in the water. Then, he focused his Gamer's Mind, and any and all expertise he had on the Mind Arts, on making his concentration as razor sharp as possible.

" _Fulguris_ " he intoned, and an even thinner wire of lightning than before connected to the feather for a split second. Harry's eyes lost focus for a moment.

When Harry refocused on the feather, it was dry. A ringing sound echoed in his ears.

Ping!

 **You've leveled up a skill due to focused usage to master a spell!**

 **Mind Arts, Lv-7 (12%)**

 **The act of magically navigating through the many layers of a person's mind and correctly interpreting one's findings, either with others or one's own self. One of the rarest magics today due to its regulated teaching.**

 **Cost-35 MP per use**

 **Branch A - Magic Sensing - Allows you to sense flowing currents of magic that are in flux.**

 **Branch B - Legilimency - Allows you to invade the mind of your target.**

"YES!" he yelled out loud in celebration. It had taken _five whole months_ to master this spell. So many sleepless nights both at the Flamels and Hogwarts…It had all finally paid off.

With a grin, he called for his best friend, "Hedwig!"

The phoenix flew over with a melodious trill. Harry grabbed onto her tail feathers, and said, "Let's go show the old man what I just did shall we girl?"

An affirmative chirp was the only reply he got before she grabbed hold of him and they were both engulfed in a vortex of fire.

When the fire receded from his vision, Harry was in the Flamel apartment's living room, with two wands mere centimeters in front of his face. Harry calmly stared the owners of those wands in the eyes and flatly said, "Getting paranoid in your old age are you?"

"Harry!? What are you doing here!?" Perenelle asked as the two ancients lowered their wands.

Harry grinned as he wordlessly showed them the dry feather.

Nicholas's eyes widened, "You're _joking_ ," he said to him as he grabbed the feather from his hand and started waving his wand over it.

Perenelle's eyes flashed golden for a second as she slipped into mage sight to confirm what Harry was implying. Her eyebrows disappeared into her hairline as a proud smile spread across her face.

"No he's not" she asserted, confirming what Nicholas's spells were no doubt showing as well. That the feather had a lightning spell cast on it.

Harry had passed the first test of alchemy. Absolute control over the _Fulguris_ spell.

"Half the time," Nicholas shook his head in amazement, "It took you just above half the time to finish those spells. I gave you till December, and you bring them to me before October starts. That's faster than _I_ mastered the spell…how?"

"I don't know. Maybe it's just the place, maybe it's my Occlumency. Something about Hogwarts just boosts my learning speed," like the Location Boost, Harry mentally added, "Or who knows," he joked, "maybe I'm just better than you old man."

Nicholas raised an eyebrow, "Whatever helps you sleep at night, you little runt. Reality is that you just had a better teacher."

"You keep feeding your ego that much and you'll end up getting a heart attack," Harry shot back before he changed the subject back to more pertinent matters, "But enough of that. Tell me. What's next? What's after this spell?"

"I…I was going to give you the next batch of books as a Christmas present of sorts, but I suppose I'll have to find a new one," he sighed, before continuing, "The Library is a bit of a mess right now, and I'll have to clean up a bit to find the books that you'll need to prepare for the next lesson of alchemy. Which, I suppose, you'll get when you come back for the Christmas break. It's all about the Healing aspect of the art."

Nicholas shook his head before he headed up the hallway towards the Library, leaving Harry with Perenelle and Hedwig, who was happily nibbling away on the apples in the living room fruit bowl.

They sat down on the duvet and started chatting about how Harry's school year had gone thus far. Perenelle, who had expressed concern about the Mrs Norris thing over the letter, was even more concerned about the entire thing after she heard a more detailed description from him verbally, even going so far as to offering to pull Harry from the school, which Harry promptly and vehemently denied.

Soon, the conversation drifted to a lull, and they both watched Hedwig as she hopped and flapped her way all around the room, curiously testing everything to see if anything had changed while she was gone.

A question, that Harry had always had, and never quite voiced brought itself to the front of his mind.

In one of the many idle moments during the summer, he'd once compared the situation of the Flamels having to keep their lives a secret with the secret of his own. And lately, being as surrounded by his friends as he was, that question had troubled him quite a bit. Stuffing down his hesitation, he decided to screw it and ask it.

"Do you ever feel alone Perenelle?" he asked, catching the attention of the ancient witch, "You have this secret that you can't tell anybody around you. Doesn't it just weigh on you like nothing else?"

Perenelle didn't say anything. Harry turned to look at her, only to see that she was staring at him with an odd look in her eyes. And then, she blinked, and her eyes turned golden.

"Join me Harry," she said gently, and Harry knew what she meant. With nary a thought, his Mage Sight activated, and he joined Perenelle in gazing at the mana that flowed all around them.

"You see it too, don't you? The one thing that connects us all…Magic…people usually like to believe that magic is a tool, but I've always had a little bit of a different belief. It's not magic that is a tool, but those of us who are magical. We are the mediums for the magic to show its presence in the world"

"That sounds almost religious," Harry pointed out.

"I suppose it does…" Perenelle mused, "It is the closest thing to religion that I've ever believed in. The belief that magic has sentience, and that it cares for me. It comforts me, that thought, in the times when the burden of the past and the loneliness of the present feel a bit too heavy on my shoulders."

She paused for a second, before she continued.

"Do I feel lonely? Yes. Sometimes. Not so much since you've joined the family," she said with a smile at him, "But do I feel alone? No. Never. How could I, with the belief that I'm a part of something so much bigger?"

Harry stared at the mana of the house, continually moving and churning all around him, and let the smooth flowing waves of mana calm his senses. He felt a bit more at peace with his own secret.

Of course, Perenelle just _had_ to ruin the moment.

"You don't have to keep it a secret, you know," she said.

"Keep what a secret?" Harry asked, feeling a bit wary. Had the Flamels somehow uncovered his Gamer powers?

"That you're gay."

That was unexpected. Harry's eyes almost popped out of his head, before he pulled himself together and eloquently expressed his reaction to that question, " _What!?_ "

"You do know that we will accept you no matter what your sexuality is right?" Perenelle continued, although the teasing smile on her face gave her away, "We're both pretty modern about it. Nicholas seems to have a habit of picking up gay apprentices. Did you know that his last three were all gay? It wouldn't be a stretch to imagine that you are too."

"Goddamit woman! I am not gay!" Harry cried indignantly, elbowing the woman in the arm, who then, in pursuit of retribution, found a ticklish spot near his midriff and launched an assault on him.

Their combined laughter echoed through the hallway down to the Library.

Nicholas, who was cleaning up all the mess in his lab while searching for some books, paused for a second to listen to the merry laughter of his family before he shook his head and resumed his work.

He had a small smile on his face.

* * *

The next few days passed pretty glumly, as Harry tried to evenly split his time between researching some stuff about the Game project, getting started on the massive pile of books Nicholas had handed him, and keep up with his school work.

His subjects skills had started regularly leveling up as well, now that he was back at Hogwarts. He was still holding out hope for some sort of special reward when those hit level 10.

 **Potions, Lv-9 (85%)**

 **Your skill in brewing and creating potions with your magic is shown in this skill.**

 **Transfiguration, Lv-8 (25%)**

 **Your skill in transfiguration branch of magic with your magic is shown in this skill.**

 **Charms, Lv- 9(8%)**

 **Your skill in the art of charms with your magic is shown in this skill.**

 **Herbology, Lv-7 (63%)**

 **Your skill with flora, magical and nonmagical is shown in this skill.**

And between all this hustle and bustle, Mrs. Norris had eventually entirely slipped his mind.

The first week of October was when the Quidditch tryouts were held. Harry hadn't been very interested in the entire thing, but he and Hermione had gone to watch Ron, Terry and Dean try and fail to make their house teams. While Dean had only gone to try out for fun and wasn't very upset when he didn't make it, Ron and Terry had taken the loss pretty badly.

"As long as they've got Wood, I've got no chance of getting in the keeper's spot," Ron had told Harry glibly, as he defeatedly returned the school broom to the cupboard he'd taken it from.

"Don't say that Ron, you'll make it next time," Harry had assured him, although he knew that his redhead friend was nowhere near as good as the Gryffindor captain. Even if he didn't like the sport, Harry could always respect skill, and Oliver Wood had spades of that.

For Terry, it had been third-year Cho Chang who had pushed him out of the race. Fast and lightweight, Cho Chang had proven a good fit for the spot of the Ravenclaw seeker, although Terry had given some decent competition to her. He had spent two whole days after the tryouts looking as if someone had murdered his pet rabbit.

And so the life at Hogwarts went on.

Harry had expected this particular October Monday to be nothing but boring and normal. It soon turned out to be anything but.

It had all started in the first period, where Harry had partnered himself with Ernie Macmillan, since Terry had come down with a terrible cold and had been ordered to rest in the dorms for the day.

It was during that period that Harry realized something. Ernie Macmillan wasn't called the Neville Longbottom of Hufflepuff for nothing. About halfway through the period, Harry had turned away just for a second to finish dicing the Redcap skin, and Ernie made a very dangerous mistake. He added ground Erumpet horn powder to an infusion of Aconite.

A very stupid mistake to make, but even more importantly, a very dangerous mistake to make.

The resulting explosion had thrown the entire class to the floor, and Harry was left with a rib sticking out of his side.

He could have easily healed himself then and there, but the injury was gruesome and very easily visible, which was why most of the class had already seen it by the time Harry had even realized it was there, making it impossible for him to subtly heal it without exposing his Gamer abilities.

So off to the Hospital Wing he'd been sent.

The matron Madam Pomfrey had set the bone back into place and healed it right up in a jiffy, before bandaging the wound up, but being the fussy little witch that she was, she didn't agree to even let Harry _move_ from the bed before the next morning.

And that was how Harry found himself that night. Tied to a bed in the Hospital wing, mentally swearing up a storm at Madam Pomfrey and Ernie as he drifted off to sleep.

About a couple of hours into the night, Harry woke quite suddenly in the pitch blackness and with a thrill of horror, realized that someone was shaking him in the dark.

"Geroff!" he exclaimed loudly before he realized what it was. Or rather who it was, "Dobby!"

The house-elf's goggling tennis ball eyes were peering at Harry through the darkness, looking more distressed than he had ever seen them before.

"Dobby is sorry to disturb Harry Potter," he whispered miserably "But Dobby didn't know who else to go to sir."

Harry heaved himself up on his pillows, pulling himself together, before he asked, "What's the matter Dobby? What happened?"

"Something bad sir. Something bad. Dobby's mind has been messed with."

"Your mind? What do you mean?" Harry asked hurriedly, growing increasingly worried.

"Dobby has forgotten things, sir. Things that Dobby had merely thought and heard and never really told anybody. Where there were those memories, now there are holes sir!" the house elf said, clutching his head and looking incredibly worried and scared, as if the very thought of someone messing with his mind was repulsive.

An Obliviate, Harry realized, someone could have obliviated the elf without accounting for how differently an elf's brain works. "You think you've been memory charmed."

"Indeed yes, sir," said Dobby, nodding his head vigorously, ears flapping as he climbed up onto Harry's bed at his feet. "Dobby was ironing Harry Potter's clothes yesterday when Dobby noticed how Dobby couldn't remember many of the ideas he had about what bad master could have been doing sir! And Dobby didn't know what to do except to bother the great Harry Potter!"

"Don't worry about it Dobby," Harry said, casting an Observe on the elf. If he'd been memory charmed, then it should show up as a status effect.

 **Dobby**

 **Lv-23**

 **HP-2025/2025**

 **MP-1350/1350**

 **Race- House Elf**

 **Str-5**

 **Vit-27**

 **Dex-12**

 **Int-8**

 **Wis-12**

 **Luc-4**

 **Dobby is a male house-elf who works at Hogwarts. His old masters used to treat him cruelly, and as such, he, like most house elves, has health issues and low self-esteem. He is a big fan of Harry Potter and is incredibly loyal to him.**

 **He is scared since he has noticed that some of his memories missing from his head.**

Harry stared at the observe. Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

"Is it possible that you could have just forgotten something Dobby?" he asked tentatively.

Dobby shook his head resolutely, his ears flapping about him, before he suddenly froze, his bat ears quivering.

Harry heard it, too. There were footsteps coming down the passageway outside.

"Dobby must go! Be safe sir!" breathed the elf, looking quite scared. There was a crack, and Harry was suddenly alone again. He slumped back into bed, pretending to sleep as he kept his eyes on the dark doorway to the hospital wing as the footsteps drew nearer.

Next moment, Dumbledore was backing into the dormitory, wearing a long woolly dressing gown and a nightcap. He was carrying one end of what looked like a statue. Professor McGonagall appeared a second later, carrying its feet. Together, they heaved it onto a bed, which was blocked from his sight by a hospital screen.

Harry activated Mage Sight, hoping that it would be able to see through the thin curtains.

It could.

"Get Poppy," whispered Dumbledore, and Professor McGonagall hurried past the end of Harry's bed and out of sight. Harry lay still and unmoving, pretending to be asleep. He heard urgent voices, and then Professor McGonagall swept back towards the bed with the statue, closely followed by Madam Pomfrey. He heard a sharp intake of breath.

"What happened?" Madam Pomfrey whispered to Dumbledore, bending over the statue on the bed.

"Another attack," said Dumbledore gravely, "Minerva found her on the third-floor corridor."

Harry peered at the glowing form of the statue with his Mage sight, before he momentarily turned it off and peered over the screen, trying to see the name in the window that floated over the statue.

 **Hannah Abbott**

 **Lv- 6**

It was Hannah Abbott. The Hufflepuff half-blood from their year. He'd seen her only this morning, chatting her head off at Susan Bones…And now she lay lifeless as a stone crafted mausoleum, her magic just as frozen and unmoving as Mrs. Norris's was when he'd tried to heal her. She was holding a minuscule circular compact mirror in her hand.

"Petrified?" whispered Madam Pomfrey.

"Yes," said Professor McGonagall.

"Good gracious!" whispered Madam Pomfrey as she pried the hand mirror the girl was holding in her hands and looked at it, "Completely shattered."

"What does this mean, Albus?" asked Professor McGonagall urgently. "The girl is a half-blood. Why would the heir even go after her?"

"It means," said Dumbledore, "that our fears have proven true. The Chamber of Secrets is indeed open again. And no one is safe anymore."

* * *

 **What did you think of the first scene? And the part with the Flamels? Let me know.** **Suggestions, Opinions and Questions are welcome as always. You can thank me for the quadruple update this time by leaving a little review. They're always a cheer-up. :)**


	29. Book-II:The Games We Play

Chapter 9:

Harry Potter was unhappy about several things.

But on this particular October Wednesday morning, sitting on his bed, hidden from the dorm around him by his bed-curtains, he was unhappy about his abysmally low strength stats.

 **STR-17**

 **VIT-24(+4)=28**

 **DEX-22(+4)=26**

 **INT-40**

 **WIS-43**

 **LUC-27**

His Int and Wis stats were above most adults, but he was only as good as an average seventh year in the Str department. The complete imbalance of the stats towards his Int and Wis just felt really off to him.

Granted, he should have expected that. He was at a school that taught magic. Of _course_ his skills would be more oriented towards the mana side of his abilities. But Harry _really_ didn't want to slack in any department. He was very insistent with himself about that.

It was while riding that particular train of thought, that Harry remembered a memory about one particular idea that he'd heard about quite a while back, but never really used. Closing his eyes, he used Gamer's Mind to pull forth that memory of the Malfoy's New Year party.

 _Celestina Warbeck eyed her tumbler before looking at Harry. "Wanna take a sip."_

 _Harry raised an eyebrow. "Forgive me Miss Warbeck, but I'm kind of underage."_

 _"Come on Harry. There's a lot crazier stuff to do than drink underage. The last guy I slept with used to turn his clothes into stone just to try to bulk up. Did it because I told him he was a fat slob once. Wanted to impress me." Celestina said_

 _"So did he? Impress you?"_

 _"Oh hell no. I left him three days later. Too desperate. So don't you wanna have your first drink?"_

Harry sighed.

Wearing an inner vest made of stone wasn't exactly the best idea he'd ever had, but he didn't really have anything else he could do here at Hogwarts that could help him increase his Str except long hours training in an ID. And with the school's current atmosphere of pure paranoia and worry, he disappearing for hours on end would not only be suspicious but also stupid.

Besides, he did have his Healing ability, in case he ended up breaking a few bones. So there was nothing holding him back from a bit of experimentation.

He took off his shirt and set his wand onto the vest he was wearing, before he incanted, " _Duro_ "

With an "Oomph!" he slammed right back into the bed.

Stupid idea.

Very stupid idea.

Looking like a turtle that had somehow turned itself upside down, Harry flailed around a bit trying to right himself, before he decided to bugger it and opened up his stat window before feeding 6 points into his Str, bringing it up to 23.

He felt the strain of the stone vest on his muscles reduce as his increased strength stats went to work. Finally able to move his hands enough to cast a spell, Harry put his wand tip to the vest and cast a feather-light charm before he sat back up.

He'd have to ease into the weight, he realized, and not just throw it all on in one go.

Having understood that, he slowly reduced the amount of mana he was putting into the feather-light charm, making the stone vest weigh closer and closer to its true weight, before he canceled the charm entirely. At approximately 15 kilos, it wasn't straining his muscles all that much anymore.

Letting the weight of the vest ease in, Harry moved his torso around a bit, before he slipped on his shirt and robes. Parting the bedcurtains, he stepped off the bed.

The others hadn't woken up yet, he noted as he walked around, getting himself accustomed to the weighted vest. Realizing that Hedwig was awake, and was watching him with glinting eyes, Harry walked over to her gilded perch and scratched her behind her neck, amusedly watching as her eyes slid shut and her right leg started twitching.

"You look like a cat" he pointed out and got a baleful glare in response.

Hearing a melodious trill from outside, Harry looked out the window, only to see the familiar red plumed form of Fawkes fluttering about just outside the tower.

It was Hedwig's time to be off.

Hedwig hopped onto his shoulder, and with a smile, Harry went over to open the window. With a quick flap of her wings, Hedwig took off and joined her older friend before flying off towards the forest to do some free exploration and playtime.

Harry mentally made a note that he'd have to remember to get Fawkes some quality apples for Christmas, incredibly glad that another older Phoenix was around at school to help him take care of Hedwig, who was practically a baby by Phoenix standards.

"She's off to the forest again huh?" came Terry's voice from behind him.

"Yeah," Harry replied, turning around to look at his pajama-clad friend, "She just keeps getting bored in the tower, and a bit of time outside with friends is good for a growing girl like her."

A grin spread across Terry's face, before he remarked, "You sound like my Mum"

"I do huh?" Harry remarked, before schooling his expression into a severe frown and saying in his shrillest voice, "Get ready Terry! _Why_ haven't you changed out of your pajamas yet young man!"

"Wow. That's scarily accurate. How did you do that without ever meeting her?"

"Really?"

"Nah," he said, chuckling, "I'm just screwing with you. She sounds nothing like that."

"Hilarious. Now go get ready. I'll see you at breakfast." Harry shot back, before he headed down the stairs out of the common room, trying to keep his balance with his weighted vest on. Thankfully, his DEX was at a very decent place, and he could handle himself with no problem.

The moment he reached walked into the room, he heard a familiar ring.

Ping!

 **Due to using torso weights gear, you have gained +1 to Str.**

With a smile, Harry headed down the tower staircase to breakfast.

Halfway to the Great Hall, it became very evident that turning his _entire_ vest to stone was a _very_ stupid idea. His movement was not only incredibly restricted, but also felt very clunky and odd.

Deciding to immediately rectify that, Harry quickly slipped into a nearby bathroom and shut himself in a stall.

A couple of _Scourgifies_ later, the stall was entirely clean. He took off his shirt and robes, before he cast the counter-spell onto his vest, turning it back to cloth so that he could move about easier.

Pulling out a used old shirt from his inventory, he cut several rectangular pieces out of it using a few _Diffindos_ , and made sure that they were about twice the size of his hand.

Then, he cast _Duros_ on each of them, turning them into stone, and proceeded to glue them in a spaced-out manner to the front and back of his cotton inner vest, making sure that they wouldn't restrict his side to side movements or bend movements in any way.

Having done that, he put the weighted vest on, and did some actual stretching, making sure that his Strength-cheat-vest version 2.0 was working fine. Thankfully, the vest was one of those that Perenelle had brought for him, and was magical, so it wasn't going to be tearing under the weight anytime soon.

With a grin, Harry put his shirt and robes back on and headed out of the bathroom in a brisk walk. He'd been delayed quite a bit by the impromptu enchanting he had done in the bathroom which meant that Terry would have arrived at the Great Hall by now.

The news that Hannah Abbott had been attacked on Monday and was lying as though dead in the hospital wing had spread through the entire school by the evening Tuesday. And today, two days after the attack, its effects on the school's psyche had never been clearer to Harry as he walked through the corridors towards the Great Hall.

The air was thick with rumor and suspicion. Most of the first and second years were now almost exclusively moving around the castle in tight-knit groups, as though scared they would be attacked if they ventured forth alone.

Meanwhile, behind the teachers' backs, a roaring trade in talismans, amulets, and other protective devices were sweeping the school. Harry was a bit surprised to see Neville Longbottom buying a large, smelly green onion from a shady looking sixth year near the Grand Staircase. Harry stopped to point out to the jumpy Gryffindor that he was in no danger; he was a pureblood, and therefore quite unlikely to be attacked.

"Hannah was a _half-blood_. And besides, they went for Filch first," Neville said, his round face fearful. "Everyone knows I'm almost a Squib."

Leaving the boy behind to complete his purchase, Harry entered the Great Hall and made his way over to his usual spot on the Ravenclaw table before he loaded up his plate with potatoes.

He got as far as his first bite before he noticed that something was wrong.

Pausing, Harry blinked and looked all around him to check that he wasn't seeing things before he put down his spoon and turned to Terry.

"Terry," he asked, "where are all the Hufflepuffs and Slytherins?"

Terry looked at him blankly for a second, "You haven't heard? The Slytherins were attacked this morning."

"Attacked!" Harry said, shocked, before asking, "Was someone petrified?"

"Petrified?" Terry seemed thrown off for a second before he realized what he meant, "Oh no. Nothing like that. It was the Hufflepuffs."

"The Hufflepuffs?" Harry asked, getting even more puzzled.

"Yeah. I was talking to Dean and Ron before you came in, and they told me what happened. Apparently, the Hufflepuffs got really mad over Hannah being petrified, and students from all the seven years banded together and attacked the Slytherins on the way to Breakfast. Picked 'em all off in ones and twos. It was a bloody massacre."

"Today!?" Harry exclaimed, "And were they caught?"

"Yeah. Professor Sprout has locked them all in their dorms and took off a load of Hufflepuff's house points. She hasn't come out yet, but Fred and George Weasley somehow snuck into their common room and heard that they won't be allowed out of the common rooms for three days except for food and classes. Plus, they're saying most of the Slytherins won't be released from the Hospital wing until at least tonight. Lots of broken bones and stuff."

Harry didn't know what to say, "Damn…" he muttered, "This is…it is just crazy…"

"Not really," Terry said as he sipped on his pumpkin juice, much to Harry's surprise, "I mean, I know it was bad, and they shouldn't have done it and all. But I get it. One of their own is hospitalized for months now. They have to feed her with tubes and potions now to stop her from starving. She would have died of starvation had Dumbledore not found her in the right time. I can understand where they're coming from. Besides, it's almost a guarantee that one of the Slytherins was the Heir. Now that the Heir is hospitalized, we won't have any more attacks."

"Terry," Harry said softly, "You don't know that. The Heir might not be a Slytherin."

"Really?" Terry maintained with a raised eyebrow, "So you're telling me that the Hat read some kid's mind and saw that the kid was the Heir of Slytherin, and it decided _not_ to put that kid into Slytherin? Just for fun?"

"It could have, but that doesn't make it okay for the Hufflepuffs to just take out everyone in an entire house," Harry insisted, "That's a quarter of the entire school! Besides, Dumbledore said that this kind of dark magic was beyond any student."

Terry shrugged. "Maybe it is, or maybe the heir is just telling the Chamber's monster who to target. Besides, better a quarter of the school than the whole if you ask me," he said before going back to his food, leaving Harry at a loss for words.

And so the breakfast silently continued. Hermione joined them soon after, having almost skipped breakfast to finish the Charms homework in the common room. A few minutes later, Harry finished his breakfast and went over to the Gryffindor table. Making his way over to where Ron and Dean were teasing Ginny about her and Colin Creevey being Potions partners, Harry got their attention and asked, "Hey guys, could you meet me after the classes near the Arithmancy classroom?"

"Arithmancy classroom? Is it about that project you've been going off into the library about?" Dean asked.

"Yeah actually," Harry replied, "I need some help with that."

"Alright mate," Ron said after getting a nod from Dean, "We'll be there."

"Oh, and be careful in Potions," Dean added, "I heard that Snape's pretty pissed off about what happened with the Hufflepuffs. Just keep your head low today."

"Thanks for the heads up mate," Harry tossed back before he made his way back over to the Ravenclaw table, where he extracted the same promise from Terry and Hermione before they all headed off to Potions together.

On the way down to the dungeons, Harry pulled up his Potions skill and checked its level.

 **Potions, Lv-9 (85%)**

 **Your skill in brewing and creating potions with your magic is shown in this skill.**

He was genuinely hoping that this skill would give him something cool when it hit level 10. Maybe a new skill that'd double his brewing speed. Or maybe some sort of subskill to his Mage Sight that's allow him to quickly pick out ingredients for potions in the wild. The possibilities were almost limitless.

As he entered the classroom and took his seat beside Terry, Harry just hoped that the Game wouldn't be an absolute cock-block and just give him nothing when he hit level 10.

That thought and all others flew right out of the window as Severus Snape barrelled into the class, looking more like an angry vampire than Harry had ever seen. What followed was the single most _brutal_ class of Potions that Harry had seen in all his time at Hogwarts.

First, there was the quiz, in which he individually asked them all questions way beyond their year's syllabus. Every student got asked 3 questions, and each wrong answer cost 5 points from the person's house. Ravenclaws suffered the most massive loss of points in what appeared to be a very long time. Furthermore, since the Hufflepuffs were all still in their common room, Snape deducted a further 100 points from them, single-handedly eliminating any chance the Badgers had of winning the House Cup this year.

Fifteen minutes later, ten cauldrons stood steaming between the wooden desks, on which stood brass scales and jars of ingredients. Professor Snape prowled through the fumes with a deep frown, making waspish remarks about any mistakes he found. Harry was pretty sure he saw Su Li almost cry at one point.

In that class, Harry's first potion, a Swelling Solution was a bit too runny, and cost him 5 points when he handed it over. But he couldn't care less, he had something else on his mind.

Ping!

 **Potions skill has been evolved due to reaching level 10 on an theoretical skill!**

 **Potion Crafting, Lv-10 (85%)**

 **This skill represent the user's skill in Potions. Using this skill, the user can access the Potions crafting window to craft some dank potions, provided that he has all the ingredients and a cauldron handy. Sit back and let your Crafting skill take control of your body in Auto mode, or follow the crisp and clear instructions in Manual mode. Just set your recipe, and you're good to go.**

 **The command 'Potion Crafting' opens up the crafting window. Command 'Recipe List' shows all known Recipes.**

 **Chances of Success: (100 - 10 x Difficulty level + Lv of Potion Crafting)%**

Harry read through the new skill's description, feeling a slightly creeped out by the Auto mode thing, before he walked back to his potions desk and mentally commanded, 'Potion Crafting' making a new unfamiliar screen pop up.

 **Crafting Window: Potion Crafting, Lv-10**

 **Recipe: Not set**

 **Brewing Time: ?**

 **Ingredients Acquired: ? out of ?**

 **Container Required: ?**

 **Difficulty level: ?**

 **Mode: AUTO/MANUAL**

Feeling quite impressed with this new skill, Harry imagined the possibilities if there was something similar to this in store for his Enchanting skill.

There was one more potion they had to make for today's class as a revision, a simple Star Grass Salve, and Harry decided to test this new skill with that. He went over to the Potions cupboard and set up all the ingredients he'd need on the table before he opened up the crafting window and set the recipe to Star Grass Salve. The Game quickly filled in all the remaining blanks.

 **Crafting Window: Potion Crafting, Lv-10**

 **Recipe: Star Grass Salve**

 **Brewing Time: 15 minutes**

 **Ingredients Acquired: 12 out of 12**

 **Container Required: Pewter Cauldron**

 **Difficulty level: 1**

 **Mode: AUTO/MANUAL**

Harry pressed AUTO. His eyes widened as he felt a sudden pull, and his hands automatically started dicing up the Stutnam hide and spider legs. They were still under his control, he could tell, but it was almost as if some kind of force was holding his hands and guiding them through all the motions. It was weirdly freaky and not so at the same time.

10 minutes in, when the ingredients were all in the cauldron and all the stirring was done, Harry felt the force let go of his hands, and they were entirely back under his control. Flexing his fingers to check that they were completely back under his control, Harry stared wondrously at the stewing potion that was _exactly_ the shade that it was supposed to be.

In the corner of his vision, a small window had opened up.

 **Waiting Period: 40/120 seconds**

Comprehending the fact that the skill was letting him know how long he'd have to wait to let the salve thicken, Harry waited for a few more seconds to see what would happen next.

Ping!

 **Please touch the ladle to continue AUTO Potion Crafting 'Star Grass Salve'!**

Harry put out his hand and touched the ladle that was half dipped in the cauldron, and the force took hold of his hand once more, adding the final ingredients and pouring the Salve out into a phial, before it let go of his hands for the final time.

Ping!

' **Star Grass Salve' Crafting Complete!**

Harry happily noted that the color was the exact shade of lime green that it was supposed to be, before he headed up to Snape's table and handed him the phial, in the process successfully managing to make the only potion that hadn't lost its maker any points.

Terry impressedly patted his back as Harry happily packed up his equipment and headed out of the class for the next double periods of Transfiguration.

That skill was at level 8, and would take another few weeks of work to get up to level 10, but if the payoff was anything even remotely as good as this phenomenally powerful Potion Crafting skill, then it would be _more_ than worth it.

* * *

That afternoon, after a rather boring double period of Transfiguration, in which once again they were alone due to the absence of Hufflepuff, Harry and Hermione headed up to the second floor, where the Arithmancy classroom was located, while Terry headed up to the Hospital Wing for a bit to grab his flu medicine, promising to meet them directly at the designated meeting spot.

Harry and Hermione idly chatted about what had happened in the morning and the whole Chamber business as they climbed up the Grand staircase to the second floor.

"I don't think they should have done that," she said, frowning, "Besides, I've been thinking about how even Dumbledore couldn't cure Mrs. Norris, and that made me think that whatever attacked her might not be…well…human."

"That's a rather bold assumption, isn't it? Dumbledore couldn't possibly know all the magic from everywhere in the world. And that Beast, whatever it is, couldn't possibly have survived in the chamber for a thousand years," Harry refuted.

Hermione gave a small shrug, "It's just a thought I had."

As she spoke, they turned a corner and found themselves at the end of the very corridor where the first attack had happened. They stopped and looked. The scene was almost just as it had been that night, except that there was no stiff cat hanging from the torch bracket, and an empty chair stood against the wall bearing the message.

 _The Chamber of Secrets has been Opened_

"Filch hasn't stopped his guard huh?" Harry muttered as they walked closer to the message. Harry's observe on the paint only showed it as conjured permanent colour, giving him no clue as to what might have happened. He stared long and hard at the letters, hoping that some sort of pattern would emerge, but nothing did.

"Come and look at this!" said Hermione, "This is funny…"

Harry turned around and crossed to the window next to the message on the wall. Hermione was pointing at the topmost pane, where around twenty spiders were scuttling, apparently fighting to get through a small crack. A long, silvery thread was dangling like a rope, as though they had all climbed it in their hurry to get outside.

"Have you ever seen spiders act like that?" said Hermione wonderingly.

"No," muttered Harry.

A strange daze seemed to fall over him. Half forgetting that Hermione was even there, he placed his finger against the wall near the spiders with an open palm. Some sort of mind control seemed to take hold of the arachnids, as they instantly stopped struggling, and as one turned around and scuttled over Harry's fingers onto his palm.

Hermione watched with an open mouth as Harry opened the window and extended the palm with the spiders outside the window.

As one, the spiders organized themselves in a circle and released several silk threads from their spinnerets into the air, which condensed into one triangular shaped parachute. A small gust of wind came and carried the spiders away on the updraft of the wind towards the direction of the forbidden forest.

Harry stared at his hand wondrously for a second, before he seemed to regain his bearings and quickly shut the window close.

"How did you get them to do that?" Hermione asked in a wondrous whisper.

Harry looked at Hermione, feeling slightly dazed as a memory that even he himself had forgotten bought itself to the front of his mind.

"I…I don't know" Harry absently muttered back, "I think…I think I've been able to for a long time…can't quite remember…"

"But how?" she pushed on.

Harry looked her in the eye. Almost as if moving out of his own control, he heard his own voice start speaking, "Back with the Dursleys, before they enrolled me in school, I didn't have any friends. Spiders…spiders were good company back then. Lived with me in my cupboard, scared off my cousin when he'd come for me, kept all the other bugs away…"

He took a deep breath before continuing, "I remember one day I'd sliced my arm open in the kitchen. It was a big cut, but I didn't want to bother my Uncle, so I just tried to bandage it up in myself with an old shirt. I remember the dry cloth just hurting a lot and crying myself to sleep."

He rubbed the thin scar that ran down his left arm as Hermione looked on with pitying eyes.

"Next morning, I woke up, and there was not a shred of pain in my arm. My entire arm was fully covered in spider silk, and when I washed the silk off, it was almost completely healed. I still don't know how it happened…I remember thinking it was some sort of weird science thing related to spiders…but in retrospect it was probably accidental magic. Ever since then, I've always been good with spiders."

Ping!

 **By to revisiting an old forgotten memory of magic, you have gained a new skill!**

 **Animal Empathy, Lv-1 (10%)**

 **This skill can be used to sense and understand the emotions of animals and vice versa, allowing a mutual understanding to form between the user and the animal he's understanding. It is not a form of mind control, so aggressive animals may still attack user, although eventually this power may grow to the point where the user can exert some degree of control over the creature.**

 **Unlocked Animals:**

 **Arachnid Empathy: User can use this skill on arachnids.**

 **Snake Empathy: User can use this skill on snakes.**

"So you gained some sort of control over spiders?" Hermione finally seemed to ask, and Harry was glad that she didn't comment on the cupboard or ask how he'd sliced his arm open. He waved away the new skill window before replying.

"Not control…empathy is a better way to put it. I can understand them, and they can understand me. If they know that I don't mean them harm, they'll listen to me," Harry said, pausing for a moment before he added, "We'd better go. The others must've arrived by now," and started walking towards the Arithmancy classroom.

Hermione didn't speak again on their way to the Arithmancy classroom, where they met up with the others.

"How did your Potions go?" Harry asked Ron as he led them towards Professor Vector's office a bit ways off the classroom.

"Bad…" Ron muttered, as Dean fervently nodded while adding, "I used to think regular Snape was bad, but this is just…he was _pissed off_. Angry like I've never seen him before."

"Well, what did you expect?" Hermione snapped, "The Hufflepuffs just threw his entire house into the hospital wing. Of course, he's angry."

Ron opened his mouth but didn't get to say anything. They'd arrived at the Professor's office. Harry poked the entrance portrait's _Mimbulus Mimbletonia_ with his wand, making it burst open and shower the blue bearded wizard in stink sap. The wizard in the portrait grumbled for a second before he waved his own wand, and with a click, the portrait opened up to show an oaken door, which Harry knocked on.

"Come in Potter. And all of you too" called the voice of the Professor.

Harry pushed open the door and led his friends inside the office, where Professor Vector was ruffling through her desk drawers looking for something. With a victorious "Aha!" she pulled out a piece of parchment.

Suddenly realizing that there were five students watching, she quickly schooled her expression.

"Potter, these are your papers from the Ministry," she said, handing him a file, "Your project has been accepted as an official Arithmancy class project. I will be letting Madam Pince know that you are to have access to books from the Restricted Section. Also, you can now take off a set amount of time from your classes to work on your project, provided you do so _judiciously_. Is that perfectly understood?"

"Of course Professor," Harry said as he took the file from her and subtly dropped it into his inventory for safekeeping.

"Good," she continued, turning to the remaining four second years in the room, "I assume Mr. Potter has told you that he has started working on a little side project of sorts?"

"Yes Professor," came Hermione's clear reply as the three boys nodded. She glanced at Harry hesitantly before adding, "He hasn't told us much about it though."

"That," the Professor replied, "he did on my instructions Miss Granger. The chances of these kinds of project ideas being stolen is very large, which made keeping the project under wraps very much necessary. But now that the paperwork is submitted and done, that's no longer needed. Mr. Potter? Would you like to tell them now?"

"Er…yes please," Harry said before he proceeded to lay out his entire plan of creating his own game and how far he had come with his planning and ideas in front of his friends.

The first person who spoke as soon as he finished, much to Harry's surprise, was actually Ron.

"You want to compete with Quidditch?" he asked in a suspicious voice. Terry's keen look was telling him that he was about to ask the exact same question.

"Well, not really compete," Harry said, lying out of his teeth, "It's not really a sport, is it? It's just an exploration game. Fun relaxing stuff to do on the ground for those of us who can't make the Quidditch team."

Ron wavered, "Well…I'll give you that. The Gobstones club isn't really all that much fun"

"But why bring us here?" Hermione asked next, "Why not just tell us in the tower or at breakfast or something?"

"That is something I'll have to explain Miss Granger," Professor Vector replied, "As a Project Leader, Mr. Potter is allowed to have a few students who can choose to work on the project with him. A team, if you will. Those students will get benefits such as relaxed marking in their end of the year exams. Furthermore, should the team be able to finish the Project and pass the Ministry's review before the end of Mr. Potter's 7th year, all of the team will be awarded perfect Arithmancy NEWT scores."

All four of Harry's friends froze, completely shell-shocked at the prospect of what looked like a free NEWT.

"That seems…generous" Hermione wonderingly muttered, "Why doesn't everyone just make a project of their own and get a guaranteed NEWT? Seems like a pretty obvious loophole to me."

The Professor had an answer to that, "Many reasons, but mostly it's just the lack of good ideas. Every idea is reviewed by the Ministry, and very few are actually even considered for approval. Mr. Potter's idea is not only innovative, it is also incredibly complex. Don't mistake this for a free NEWT Miss Granger. If any of you choose to accept Mr. Potter's offer to join his team, you'll be _working_ for that score."

Much to Harry's relief, it didn't take long after that for them to accept his offer. Professor Vector gave him a key to an empty classroom for them to use, and they resolved to meet every Sunday afternoon to work on the project for a few hours, at least for this year, before they headed out of the class and headed off to their respective common rooms.

That night, Harry took off the weighted vest in the bathroom and dropped it into his inventory before putting his shirt back on, feeling incredibly lighter.

Ping!

 **Due to using torso weights gear all day long, you have gained +4 to Str!**

Happy with that, he hopped into the stalls for a quick shower, before he headed back to the common room to get some homework done before sleep.

Much to his surprise, the common room was much more crowded than it usually was. A small knot of people was gathered around the common room's notice board, reading a piece of parchment that had been pinned up. Terry beckoned him over, looking excited.

"Oi Harry!" he said enthusiastically, "Will you be coming to the dueling club on Friday?"

"Dueling club?"

* * *

The Dueling club, as Harry learned throughout the next three days, was something that was a bit of a mystery. Some people were saying that they would be learning some new combat type magic; which Harry desperately needed since his Combat Magic skill, which was his theoretical DADA skill, hadn't levelled up even once this year under Lockhart's tutelage; and others were saying that they would be learning how to fight the Slytherin's monster in case they encountered it.

Either way, it sounded interesting. Like a true Ravenclaw, Harry went off to the library on Friday morning to research Dueling. All the Slytherins had been released from the hospital wing, and the Hufflepuff's common room arrest had ended, so the school was back to looking a bit more normal and populated than it did the last two days.

It was in the library where he first encountered what he later dubbed the Conspiracy Theorist Trio.

Consisting of Ernie Macmillan, Justin Finch-Fletchley and Seamus Finnigan, this particular trio had dedicated an entire back table in the library to find out who the heir of Slytherin was. When Harry found them, the entire table was strewn with newspapers and books on genealogy, with the occasional parchment with family trees on it.

They had used any and all resources they had access to try and trace down every single lead on every single line that claimed to have descended from Slytherin. When they had noticed that Harry was watching them, they had eagerly taken him into their folds and proceeded to explain their entire theory in _painstaking_ detail.

"And so with the Gaunts extinct and the Bulstrodes proven to be just lying, the only guy that is likely to have descended from Slytherin is Theodore Nott."

"Have you even considered the other Slytherins, or are you just pinning blame on him?" Harry asked, scratching his head, trying to understand what logic the three were using.

"What other Slytherins?" Seamus asked, looking thrown off.

"Malfoy? Greengrasses? Parkinsons? Davis? Have you looked into them?"

"Of course we have," Justin butted in, "Malfoy's family was started in the late 1600s by a businessman in France, so he's out of the question. All others are either too new or not purebloods. We've considered all the pureblood families in school. Don't tell Ron, but we even considered the Weasleys for research. We found absolutely nothing on any of them except Nott."

"Besides," Ernie butted in, "You know what's the most damning evidence is? Susan told me that the day before she was petrified, Hannah had turned down a proposition from Nott! And guess who Filch made clean the toilets the day Mrs. Norris was found hung from that torch? Nott!"

In an almost insane manner, this strange theory was starting to make some sense, even to Harry. Notts and Malfoys were close politically and familially. Everyone knew that. Was it that far of a stretch to imagine that Malfoy would have used the Notts for help with his plan to get back at Dumbledore and test Harry? If Lucius Malfoy knew that Nott was the Heir of Slytherin, then why _wouldn't_ he use him in his plans?

"I mean you might not want to pin blame on people mate," Ernie continued, oblivious to Harry's internal thoughts, "but even you'll have to admit that it does seem at least a _bit_ suspicious, how the people Nott's pissed off at are ending up hurt in this mess."

It did.

That night, when the clock hit eight, Harry and his friends made their way to the Great Hall. The long dining tables had been vanished, and a golden stage had been conjured up against one wall, lit by thousands of candles floating overhead. Most of the school seemed to be packed in the Hall, all carrying their wands and looking excited.

"I wonder who'll be teaching us?" asked Hermione over the mindless chatter of the stuffed crowd.

"As long as it's not…" Dean began, and Harry knew that exact moment that is Gryffindor friend wasn't going to like the teacher who was climbing up onto the stage.

Gilderoy Lockhart was walking onto the stage, resplendent in robes of deep plum. A few feet behind him, dressed in a spiffy little blue suit came Professor Flitwick, who floated what looked like a wooden crate up onto the stage before twiddling over to stand beside Lockhart, looking slightly constipated.

Lockhart waved an arm for silence and called out, "Gather round, gather round! Can everyone see me? Can you all hear me? Excellent! Now, Professor Dumbledore has granted me permission to start this little dueling club, to train you all in case you ever need to defend yourselves as I myself have done on countless occasions…for full details, see my published works."

An ominous rattling sound from the crate interrupted the monologue, and Dean and Ron shuddered beside him, no doubt getting flashbacks of that disastrous lesson about pixies that the DADA professor had tried to teach them. Lockhart carried on speaking.

"But now, my young apprentices, let me introduce my assistant, Professor Flitwick," said Lockhart with a wide grin, looking more punch-able to Harry than ever before, "His bouts in the Duelling championships have made sure that he knows his dueling. Not as well as me of course, having dueled down the Vanityfair witch herself. Now, the Professor has sportingly agreed to help me with a few short demonstrations before we begin. Isn't that right Professor?"

"Yes," a slightly pink-faced Flitwick squeaked out.

"That's right," Lockhart said, ambling over to where Professor Flitwick had put down the crate, "Now! I was supposed to teach you all spell-fighting, but in light of recent events, I have come to believe that our opponent is actually not human. And you won't expect the beast of Slytherin to take the time and duel with you, do you?"

A worried murmur spread across the Hall, and Lockhart continued.

"Slytherin's beast, from what we've seen so far, is fast, dangerous, and can easily hide in its surroundings to escape a wizard's attention, hence why we've been unable to catch it so far. What I have here in this box, while not Slytherin's beast itself, is a dangerous beast that something that I have encountered in my travels, that is a master of all that and more. A true danger to wizardkind. And today you youngsters will get to see it in action, all thanks to me, Gilderoy Lockhart." he said, flashing a grin, "Professor Flitwick, could you please open this up please?"

Harry watched curiously as the redness in the charms professor's face seemed to grow even more as he waved his wand, making the crate's lid fly off. Lockhart went in with both hands, and pulled out something that he gently nestled in the crook of his hand, patting it with another. It took a second for Harry to actually realize what it was.

A short silence passed over the hall, before a girl from the front row asked the question that was on all their minds.

"Professor. Is that…is that a duck?"

"Aha!" Lockhart victoriously exclaimed, "Got fooled by its clever natural disguise did you, Miss Clover? No. It is not a duck. But before I tell you what it is, have any of you heard of a Duck-billed platypus…Yes, Miss Bones."

Susan Bones blushed a bit at having been called, before answering, "They have the bill of a duck and the webbed feet of a duck don't they, Professor?"

"Indeed they do Miss Bones. Now, this," Lockhart said grandly, before he raised the white feathered yellow-billed duck in his arms for all of them to see, and magnanimously declared, "This is a Duck _bodied_ platypus. This little guy is called Juan, and he was found in a deep long lost valley in Mongolia. He's the only one left of his kind. He can eat live wizards, and it _will_ charge. So please, no sudden movements."

Half the hall, mostly the female part, oohed and aahed, clearly believing whatever bullshit the blond man was spewing. Harry looked at the beady-eyed bird in the man's hands. It looked like it was getting startled by Lockhart's teeth every time he smiled. Harry cast an Observe to check if it really was some sort of strange creature that Lockhart had managed to acquire.

 **Duck**

 **Lv-2**

 **HP:50/50**

 **Str-3**

 **Vit-3**

 **Dex-5**

 **Int-1**

 **Wis-0**

 **Luc-1**

 **It's a duck, genius. For more information, read a kid's book. Oh and put your reality-bending powers to better use than observing ducks. Idiot.**

Nope. Just a duck.

Lockhart started speaking again, and Harry waved away the screen before paying attention to whatever the fraud extraordinaire was rambling on about. He could _feel_ his own Bullshitting skill grow just by being in the presence of this Merlin of bullshitting, and he didn't want to miss out on any free level ups.

"Believe it or not, this little guy is only a year old, and he will grow up to be about fifteen feet tall. You'll be surprised to know that an adult Duck bodied platypus can take down a full grown dragon, and has the bite force of an adult blue whale. Surprising isn't it?"

Ping!

 **Skill has leveled up twice due to being in the presence of a master!**

 **Bullshitting Lv-7 (5%)**

 **A combination of lying and the truth said in a very confident manner!**

Harry raised an impressed eyebrow before waving away the screen and looking around himself, marveling at the fact that there were people, actual _people_ that were believing _this_.

This was either sad, or just plain hilarious.

Harry ultimately decided that it was a bit of both, and joined Professor Flitwick in looking like a ripe constipated tomato.

Thankfully, the class didn't _fully_ go down the drain, since about halfway through Lockhart's speech about Duck bodied platypuses, the duck decided to be a revolutionary example to all duckkind and sicced himself, wings flapping and webbed claws scratching, on the blond-haired Professor.

As a result of that, most of the school ended up _completely_ believing in duck bodied platypuses, since no normal duck could have possibly taken down the legendary Gilderoy Lockhart. Even _Dean_ had gained a bit of respect for the man. But the nicer thing that had happened as a result of that duck's revolutionary efforts was that Lockhart had gone off to the hospital wing to treat his scratches, and Professor Flitwick started teaching them some actual dueling, pairing them up and showing them how to hold their wands in a combative positions before firing off spells.

All in all, the latter half of the class had gone quite well, except for the one time Justin Finch Fletchley threw Theodore Nott a few meters across the room with an overpowered Expelliarmus.

While Harry and few others knew that Justin had hit Nott because he suspected him to be the Heir of Slytherin, there was no proof that it wasn't an accident. So Professor Flitwick simply split them up, and the class ended twenty minutes later.

* * *

When Halloween rolled around, Harry was feeling considerably less alone and sad than he had felt last year, despite the somber atmosphere brought forth by Hannah's petrifaction and the unrest in the school. Whether that was because he finally had a group of friends to support him, or just a sign of him getting older, he did not know, but being able to laugh and talk and make merry with people he cared about was something he decided that he enjoyed very much.

The stone inner vest had kept giving him Str points for quite a few days. The time between each plus point to his Str kept growing and growing, until one day, it just stopped, leaving Harry's stats in strength at a very solid number.

 **STR-33**

10 points, all from one tiny cheat in the game that he'd discovered in a party half a year ago. It was _way_ more than he'd expected, and an overjoyed Harry couldn't wait to work out what the cheats for all the other stats were.

He and his friends had finally had their first meeting for the Game Project the previous Sunday, in which they had worked out the Minimum Scanning Distances of most of the magical creatures using that handy XXX rating book that Professor Kettleburn had given him at the start of the school year.

Furthermore, the design had progressed too. Harry had always wanted to use the Hologram spell; from those Memory orbs that were used to store prophecies; for the Battle part of the game, but Dean had thrown out an idea about using the Memory Orb itself. He'd pointed out the idea that each Orb could be used to scan _one_ creature, and the player could use the creature's Orb to send or call back the creature in Battles.

It was a fantastic idea, which proved to him that bringing his friends in as his team was a good move that was paying off already.

There had been no more attacks, although the tensions between Slytherin and the rest of the school remained as strained as ever. The Mandrakes that Professor Sprout was making them tend to and grow were starting to develop acne, which meant that they were now entering their pre-pubescent days, and only a few months later Hannah would be cured and would join the school again.

All that and many more slightly optimistic thoughts passed through Harry's mind as he dug into his Halloween feast.

The decorations this year were brilliant, with lively flying bats, little clowns on top of the pumpkin cakes, and the occasional jack in a box that would pop out and scare the eating students. The older students had chosen to wear some costumes, and Lockhart had joined them with his flashy robes and long beard, portraying Merlin the ancient sorcerer. Dumbledore, not to be left behind, had decided to dress as what could only be a purple neon super wizard, with robes that had _actual_ neon tube lights on them.

Everything was going smoothly as Harry laughed and chatted and fed himself up, and for a moment, it was almost as if the Heir and Chamber business didn't exist, and they were just a bunch of kids at school having a good time.

But alas, it was not to last.

Just as Harry had finished his last piece of chicken, the door of the Great Hall opened with a bang, and Peeves the Poltergeist came shooting out, screaming at the top of his lungs,

"ATTACK! ATTACK! ANOTHER ATTACK! NO MORTAL OR GHOST IS SAFE! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES! ATTAAAAACK!"

Harry pushed down the weird sense of deja vu that he was getting, and quickly turned to look at the Head Table, where Dumbledore was already whispering back and forth in a hushed tone with Professor McGonagall and Nearly Headless Nick, who had zoomed in right behind Peeves and headed straight to Dumbledore.

Their conversation ended soon before the two Professors stood up as one and pointed their wands at the small door beside the Staff table that led to the small closed off antechamber to the side of the hall.

With a few waves of their wands, the door started expanding in size until it took up almost four times the space in the wall than it did earlier. Then, they walked into the antechamber, and a few of what looked like some _huge_ space expansion charms later, the whole antechamber was almost as big as the Great Hall itself.

Briskly walking out of the now massively expanded space, Professor Dumbledore announced, "Students. Calmly enter the antechamber and do _not_ attempt to get out. Sir Nicholas is of the opinion that there is likely danger outside. Prefects, follow your professors to the location. Your assistance is needed. There have been multiple attacks."

As soon as the last line escaped the Professor, a hush fell over the Hall, and Harry's head swiveled around the hall to make sure that his friends were all there and safe. After making sure that they all were safe, he followed the Professor's instructions and shuffled his way along with the crowd into the antechamber.

As soon as all the non-prefect students were inside the antechamber, Professor McGonagall shrunk the door back to its regular size and locked it shut from the outside.

And all that was left to do was wait.

Less than ten minutes later, a third year Gryffindor who was leaning alongside the wall called in his direction, "Hey Potter! Call for your Phoenix man. Let's go see what's happening!"

"Yeah!" another guy joined in, seeing some merit in that idea "You have a phoenix don't you? Call her mate! Bet we could go out there and investigate! Maybe even help out!"

Harry shook his head, disappointing the dozen students that wanted to get out of the room, "We're too far from the tower. I can't call her from here."

In reality, Hedwig was in his pocket at that very moment, quietly listening to everything. But he wasn't going to use her to help any students get out there and get themselves hurt. If the heir and the beast were actually out there, then staying in this room was the smartest thing to do for everyone else right now. If he had somewhere more secluded, then he possibly could have dropped into an ID and gone to investigate all by himself. But in a place _this_ jam-packed full of students, using his Gamer powers was out of the question.

And so, left without any choices, he waited.

After a whole hour of fretting, when Harry was starting to feel as if his heart would burst right out of his chest with nervousness, there was finally a click on the door, and it swung open to reveal the familiar form of the Ravenclaw Prefect, Penelope Clearwater.

The blond haired girl walked into the room, looking more troubled than Harry had ever seen her before. The students scattered across the room waited with bated breath as she walked to the center of the room, took a deep breath, and finally started speaking.

"The Professors have searched the site of the incident, and found no evidence about the culprit. The only thing we now know is that Seamus Finnigan of Gryffindor, and Justin Finch-Fletchley of Hufflepuff, are now petrified and in the hospital wing under the care of Madam Pomfrey."

She took a breath before continuing, "Fat Friar, the resident ghost of Hufflepuff, was also found with them, completely petrified by whatever it was that petrified the two students. In light of the recent events, the Professors have decreed that there will now be newer, stricter restrictions on student movements in and around the castle."

A collective cry of angry protest started, but before it could grow into anything more, Penelope raised her hand. So grave was the expression on her face that the cry of protest immediately died down. She continued, "Understand very clearly that this is _not_ just for _your_ protection. If even _one_ more student falls prey to whatever this Heir is doing…Hogwarts will be faced with no choice but to shut down."

She looked around at the somber group surrounding her, looking each of them in the eye to make sure that the point was driven in. Nodding, she turned to Harry, her expression more grave and worried than he had ever seen it before.

"Harry," she said, and for the first time, Harry noticed a noticeable waver in her voice, "Dumbledore's calling for you. They're saying he's been sacked."

* * *

 **Let's just say that I'm exploring the ramifications of what will happen in the chamber in a lot more detailed manner this time around. Prepare for the mind-bend of your life in the next chapter, 'THE THREE DUMBLEDORES'. It's coming soon, and it's an interesting one. Do leave a review if you liked. :)**


	30. Book-II:The Three Dumbledores

Chapter 10:

Five minutes later, Harry was standing on the bottom step of the revolving staircase, watching the grim face of Penelope Clearwater disappear as the staircase rose up to the level of the Headmaster's door.

Harry turned around and knocked on the old oaken door, and within moments the Professor's muffled voice echoed out, "Come in Harry."

Harry opened the door and stepped inside before he instantly ground to a halt.

The portraits were all ducking and cowering in their respective frames, fearful of the massive tornado of silver trinkets and books was whirling around in the room, centered on top of a red suitcase that lay open on top of Professor Dumbledore's claw-footed desk. Harry watched as a small book was picked up from its shelf by the winds of the tornado and then flung around until it fell into the suitcase.

"Good evening Harry!" the Professor called over the sound of the tornado from the divan near the fireplace, where he was calmly sipping on a cup of tea. A glossy lavender-tinged shield spell centered around the fireplace completely protected him and his surrounding area from any flying debris from the tornado that could have hit him.

Harry scooted along the side of the wall, ducking to avoid a trinket that was flying in such a trajectory that it would have slammed him right in the face. A few close brushes with some more debris later, he stepped into the shielded area with a not inconsiderable amount of relief.

"Good evening, sir," he said, catching his breath.

"Indeed, Harry. Sit down," said Dumbledore, waving a hand. A squishy purple armchair popped into existence behind Harry, who tested his weight on it carefully before sitting down.

"Sir, we've been worried for a while now," Harry immediately began, getting straight to the point, "What happened to Seamus and Justin? Are they alright? Did they really get petrified?"

"Ah," Dumbledore said, his face aging a century in the span of a second, "They were found lying near a second-floor broom cupboard, petrified, and are now under Madam Pomfrey's care. Friar Portlius, our Hufflepuff House's resident ghost was also found near them, completely petrified as well." Dumbledore gravely replied.

"But Fat Friar is a ghost…" Harry said confusedly, "How could…I don't understand."

Dumbledore sighed, looking slightly disturbed himself, "That is something that has yet to be determined, Harry. Thankfully, Mr. Friar is a ghost, and should be up and about in a few weeks, after which we might be able to get some insight into what happened."

A moment's silence ringed heavy in the office, before Harry asked, "Will we be able to see them soon? Seamus and Justin? Ernie was very worried about them."

"That…might not be possible," Dumbledore said, shuffling a bit in his seat, "I'm afraid that while their health is in no danger, no student will be able to see Mr. Finnigan and Finch-Fletchley until they are fully cured."

Foreboding thoughts about grievous injury immediately filled his mind. Pushing those sinister thoughts back, Harry warily asked, "But why sir? You said they were fine, and people are allowed to see Hannah. Why not Seamus and Justin?"

Dumbledore took a small sip of his tea, "It is not so much their condition Harry, as what they were doing when they were petrified."

Harry frowned. Maybe they were researching that theory of theirs in the restricted section. The theory about Nott actually being the heir didn't seem all that implausible anymore. The fact that Justin roughed up Nott in the dueling club, and then ended up petrified with one of the only other people who believed the same thing as him was looking more and more incriminating.

Deciding that he had no reason to hide that from Dumbledore, Harry said, "Were they in the Restricted section? Looking up family trees or something?"

Dumbledore looked at him over his glasses curiously, "And why would they be doing that Harry?"

Harry proceeded to explain the entire theory about Nott being the Heir of Slytherin that Justin, Ernie, and Seamus had. "Isn't it possible," he asked, "that they are right?"

"It is indeed possible," said Dumbledore, "however, I feel that it is extremely unlikely. Forgive my immodesty, but being of an age such as mine allows you a certain insight into a wizard's character, and Lucius is not the kind of person to trust children. And to answer your earlier question, no. They were not in the restricted section."

"So what were they doing then?" Harry asked with a frown.

"Let us just say," Dumbledore genially answered, "that they were engaging in some consensual nibbling."

' _What?_ ' Harry thought as he tentatively asked, "Consensual…nibbling?" not sure if he had heard it right.

"Indeed," Dumbledore confirmed, sagely nodding. "Sexual experimentation, if you would prefer to call it that."

"With each other?" Harry squeaked out.

"With one Miss Clover from the sixth year," Dumbledore corrected, "It so appears that she had generously volunteered to assist them in their experimentation. Thankfully Miss Clover was able to escape unharmed since she had passed out minutes before whatever caused the petrifactions reached the spot they were in. The reason nobody is allowed to meet them is that since they were petrified, they are now stuck in some very…compromising positions. "

Well. That was unexpected.

Completely shoving that particular thought and the unpleasant images it conjured up towards the back of his brain, Harry remembered why he had come here in the first place. He quickly changed the topic, and gingerly asked, "Is it, true sir? That you got sacked?"

"It is indeed true. The appointment or suspension of the headmaster is a matter for the governors, and they, in their infinite wisdom have decided to enact an Order of Suspension on me. Perhaps they feel that I am losing my touch. And with the number of attacks growing, it is quite honestly understandable."

"They can't be serious," Harry said, "You being here is probably the only thing stopping the heir from going on an all-out killing spree."

"It's not just me Harry," said Dumbledore, watching the last book fly into the suitcase, which immediately zipped itself shut, "but we will talk about that later. There is a reason I called for you before I leave, and it will need some elaboration and explanation. Would you bear with an old man while I try to explain the best I can?"

Harry hesitantly looked around. The question of why _he_ of all people was called was one that had been haunting him from the moment he had entered the office. And there was only one way to find out now.

Looking Dumbledore in the eye, he nodded.

Dumbledore's eyes took on their trademark twinkle, and with no more words, he rose up to his feet, walked briskly across the office and pulled open a cabinet door, bathing the office in an ethereal blue. Harry left his armchair behind and followed the Headmaster closely, peering around his shoulder to see what was giving off the light.

A shallow stone basin lay there in the cabinet, with odd carvings around the edge, filled with runes and symbols that Harry did not recognize. The silvery light was coming from the basin's contents, which seemed to be formative of both liquid and gas, and was like nothing Harry had ever seen before. It was a bright, whitish silver, and its translucent surface swirled smoothly in the basin.

Harry wonderingly cast an Observe.

 **Pensieve**

 **It is an artifact used to review memories. It has the appearance of a shallow stone or metal basin, into which runes and strange symbols are carved and precious stones are fitted. It is filled with a silvery substance, often thought to be the collected memories of people who have siphoned their recollections into it. Memories can then be viewed from a non-participant, third-person point of view.**

Harry's eyebrows rose into his hairline. Was Dumbledore going to show him memories? But memories of what? Something related to the heir perhaps?

Unknowing of Harry's internal questioning, Dumbledore lifted the basin, carried it over to his desk, placed it upon the polished top, and sat down in the chair behind it. He motioned for Harry to sit down opposite him.

Harry did so, staring at the stone basin.

"This, Harry, is called a Pensieve," said Dumbledore. "I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind."

Harry, having the skill of Gamer's Mind, couldn't honestly say that he had ever felt that way, but he nodded anyway.

"At these times," said Dumbledore, indicating the stone basin, "I use the Pensieve. One simply siphons the excess thoughts from one's mind, pours them into the basin, and examines them at one's leisure. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form."

"So…that silvery stuff is your thoughts?" Harry said, staring at the swirling white substance in the basin.

"Certainly," said Dumbledore. "Let me show you."

Dumbledore drew his wand out of the inside of his robes and placed the tip into his own silvery hair, near his temple. When he took the wand away, hair seemed to be clinging to it. It was a second before Harry realized that it was, in fact, a glistening strand of the same strange silvery white substance that filled the Pensieve. Dumbledore added this fresh thought to the basin, and Harry, astonished, saw his own face swimming around the surface of the bowl. Dumbledore placed his long hands on either side of the Pensieve and gave it a swirl, and Harry watched mystified as his own face seamlessly change into Madam Pomfrey's and then Professor McGonagall, who opened her mouth and spoke to the ceiling, her voice echoing slightly.

"That was the memory of the night you were moved into the Hospital wing." Dumbledore said, the light from the pensieve highlighting the many wrinkles that were etched on his face, "But enough of that. Today, the first thing I wish to show you using this pensieve is the reason _why_ I have been unable to stop these attacks."

"Where will we be going, sir?" Harry asked, warily eyeing the pensieve. The last time he had used some kind of device to see someone else's memory, his experience had been very much less than pleasant.

"Today Harry, we shall be taking a trip down my own memory lane to the Monday when Miss Abbott was found petrified," said Dumbledore, pulling from his pocket a crystal bottle containing a swirling silvery-white substance.

"Does this have anything to do-"

"Patience Harry" Dumbledore interrupted him calmly, "You have my word that I will answer all your questions afterward, but I request that you hold them in for now. I want you to observe everything you can while we are in the memory as carefully as possible. That is very important."

With a small tug, he pulled the stopper free of the crystal bottle and tipped the silvery contents of the bottle into the Pensieve, where they swirled and shimmered, neither liquid nor gas. Harry looked curiously at Dumbledore.

"You need to dip your face into it," said Dumbledore, gesturing toward the bowl, "After you."

Harry looked at the swirling memory for a second more, before bent forward, took a deep breath, and plunged his face into the silvery substance. Just like he had with the memory page, he felt his feet leave the office floor.

He was falling, falling through whirling darkness and then, quite suddenly, he was blinking, adjusting his eyes to the dim light. Before his eyes had adjusted, Dumbledore landed beside him.

Harry looked around himself at the high arching windows and the neat cots, placing where he was in the memory he found himself in.

He was in the hospital wing.

Footsteps rang down the passageway outside, and Harry and Dumbledore watched as the memory's shade of Dumbledore backed into the dormitory, wearing a long woolly dressing gown and a nightcap. He was carrying one end of what Harry immediately recognized as the petrified form of Hannah Abbott.

The memory McGonagall appeared a second later, carrying her feet, just as Harry remembered. Together, they heaved her onto a bed.

Harry eyed the curtained off section of the Hospital Wing a bit off from where they were standing, knowing that his own memory-self was behind it, watching what was happening with the help of Mage Sight. The real Dumbledore beside him was watching the petrified girl with rapture, his glasses glinting in the dim firelight.

"Get Poppy," whispered the memory of Dumbledore, and McGonagall hurried further into the hospital wing.

It was when the real Dumbledore tapped his shoulder that Harry turned and looked at the memory Dumbledore. He had moved incredibly close to Hannah, and was keenly observing the cover of the small compact mirror that she was holding. Harry went over to the mirror and peered at it.

On the cover of the mirror, engraved very lightly, was a set of initials.

 _A.P.W.B.D_

'Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore' Harry realized with a slight chill down his spine. His mind immediately filled with fearful implications, and his head snapped towards the real Dumbledore, who stood at the base of the bed.

"Patience Harry," he placidly said, and Harry reluctantly went back to observing Dumbledore's memory self, who was ruffling through his own pockets looking for something. A second of ruffling later, he pulled out a small silvery object and peered at it through his glasses.

Harry realized with a start that it was the exact same compact mirror.

Not similar, but the _exact_ same.

There were the same scuff marks around its edges, and the metal had turned a bluish tinge in the exact same place. And the same initials were engraved into the cover. Memory-Dumbledore's deep frown matched Harry's own frown as he confusedly tried to make sense of what was happening.

The urgent voices from deep inside the Hospital wing stopped, and the memory-Dumbledore pocketed his own mirror, erased the initials off of Hannah's with a wave of his hand, and moved back. Harry reluctantly rejoined the real Dumbledore to look at the scene from a distance.

McGonagall swept back towards the bed, closely followed by Madam Pomfrey, who sharply gasped as she looked at the petrified student.

"What happened?" she whispered to Dumbledore, bending over the statue on the bed, her face pale and distressed.

"Another attack," said Dumbledore gravely, "Minerva found her on the third-floor corridor."

"Petrified?" whispered Madam Pomfrey.

"Yes," said Professor McGonagall.

"Good gracious!" whispered Madam Pomfrey as she pried the mirror memory-Dumbledore was observing seconds ago and looked at it, "Completely shattered."

"What does this mean, Albus?" asked Professor McGonagall urgently. "The girl is a half-blood. Why would the heir even go after her?"

"It means," said the memory's Dumbledore, "that our fears have proven true. The Chamber of Secrets is indeed open again. And no one is safe anymore."

The trio of Hogwarts staff then spent the next few minutes making the petrified girl comfortable, as Harry and the real Dumbledore waited.

Finally, memory-Dumbledore said to Madam Pomfrey, "Would you excuse me for a moment Poppy? I need the lavatory," and headed out of the Hospital Wing.

"Come on Harry. Now we follow me," the Dumbledore beside him said, and they headed out in pursuit of the memory-Dumbledore.

They followed him straight into the bathroom a few minutes' walk away from the Hospital Wing, where Harry reluctantly followed both Dumbledores into a stall at the real one's insistence. There, Harry curiously watched as the memory-Dumbledore pulled out from his robes a very long, very fine gold chain and looped it around his neck. A tiny, sparkling hourglass hung from it.

"Grab onto the chain Harry," the real Dumbledore instructed urgently, closing his own hand around the intangible chain. A confused Harry followed suit.

The dark stall around them dissolved. Harry had the sensation that he was flying very fast, backward. A blur of colors and shapes rushed past him, his ears were pounding, he tried to yell but couldn't hear his own voice…

And then he felt solid ground beneath his feet, and everything came into focus again.

Heaving to catch his breath, he turned to the blue-robed ancient Headmaster next to him and indignantly asked, "What was _that_!?"

"I have just gone back in time Harry. Twenty minutes backward to a point in time three minutes before Miss Abbott was petrified. And the two of us have followed."

" _What!?_ "

"I realize that time-related magic might not have been something you knew to exist in our world, much like most other wizards," Dumbledore said, "But I must ask you to suspend your disbelief for the remaining duration of this memory, for we must keep up with myself."

Harry looked, and sure enough, the memory-Dumbledore had immediately stuffed the spindly device back into his pocket and headed out of the stall in a brisk jog. The student headmaster duo hurriedly gave chase.

They followed him all the way to the staircase on the second floor that led up to the third-floor corridor where Hannah had been found petrified. The memory-Dumbledore pulled out the mirror, waved his wand over it before re-pocketing it. Then, he stood there and started waiting patiently.

"A temporary one side mirroring charm, similar to the one Nicholas told me you used to put on your pocket to hold Miss Hedwig," the real Dumbledore idly commented.

Just as Harry was starting to wonder whether anything was going to happen or not, the blonde haired form of the alive and well Hannah Abbott appeared walking from around the bend of the corridor.

Perking up, memory-Dumbledore called, "Miss Abbott! I was looking for you," walking over to a swiftly reddening Hannah.

"Oh! Er…Good evening sir," she nervously stuttered out.

"Good evening, good evening. Now let me see here," Dumbledore ruffled around in his pocket before he pulled out the compact mirror that had his initials on it. He handed it to Hannah, who curiously looked at it, "That is a Wickester mirror, Miss Abbott. To help with your eyes."

"My eyes?" she confusedly asked, clearly having no idea what Dumbledore was talking about.

"Indeed," Dumbledore sagely nodded, "Madam Pomfrey has just found out that the Hufflepuffs have been infected by the Wickester bug in your Herbology class, which can cause fainting spells if you stare at faraway objects for too long."

Hannah's eyes widened, before she immediately fixed them onto the floor right next to her before asking, "Is it curable, Professor? Will I be alright?"

"Not to worry Miss Abbott, the mirror itself is the cure. It is also enchanted to show you whatever is in front of you in it so you can move around fine without having to risk fainting. Just do not look at anything unless it is through the mirror for a few hours and you will be fit as a fiddle in no time at all.

"Thank you, Professor," Hannah said, visibly relieved as she opened the mirror and fixed her eyes on it, testing it out and using it to see what was in front of her.

"You are quite welcome, Miss Abbott. Now if you will excuse me, I must be off to give mirrors to your fellow house-mates. Good day"

And with that, the memory-Dumbledore headed around the corridor, only to immediately put a disillusionment charm upon himself and doubling back to follow Hannah. His invisible form was outlined by a blue glow to Harry and Dumbledore, which was how they were able to easily follow him as he followed Hannah up to the third floor.

Harry, realizing that this was the point where the Heir or the Beast must have appeared to petrify Hannah, carefully watched for whatever it was that petrified her to appear.

Nothing did.

One moment, Hannah was staring the mirror in her hand and walking all well and good, and the next, she froze up and keeled over.

Harry gasped in complete shock.

Nothing!

The outlined form of memory-Dumbledore quickly ran over to where the girl was lying and started waving his wand, trying to find whatever it was that petrified the Hufflepuff. It was clearly evident a minute later that he too did not find anything.

A few seconds after that, Professor McGonagall rounded the corner, walking at a leisurely pace before she noticed the petrified student and ran over to her.

The invisible Dumbledore backed off, and moved into a spot inside a small alcove off to the side, just as McGonagall sent off a glowing ball of silvery light that Harry could only assume was some form of distress signal.

Moments later, _another_ Dumbledore, who Harry presumed was the one who hadn't time traveled yet, came jogging around the corner. A few almost inaudible lines later, they together lifted the stiff body of the petrified girl and headed off in the direction of the hospital wing.

"I think. Harry, it is time to return to my office," said a quiet voice in Harry's ear.

Harry started. In all this, he had almost forgotten that there was a third Dumbledore in the corridor, the real one.

"Come," said the Dumbledore at his side, and he put his hand under Harry's elbow. Harry felt himself rising into the air as the corridor dissolved around him. For a moment, all was blackness, and then he felt as though he had done a slow-motion somersault, suddenly landing with a huff right back into his chair.

The stone basin was shimmering on the table in front of him, and Albus Dumbledore was sitting across from him.

"Now, I believe Harry," he genially said, "is the part where you ask me your questions."

Thousands of questions whirled around in his mind. Harry, in an effort to calm them all down and ask his questions in a civilized manner, activated Gamer's mind. The storm of questions died down, and a single query made its way to the front of his mind. But before he could even ask it, a ringing sound interrupted him.

Ping!

 **Due to witnessing the mental effects of traveling through time using a magical device, you have gained a new mental skill!**

 **Precognition, Lv- 1 (0%)**

 **Allows the user to foresee his opponent's move a specific time before the move actually happens in any close quarters physical combat situations. User can only predict a move a certain time before the move happens.**

 **Current Precognition time - 1/4 second**

Quickly pushing away the screen for later inspection, Harry asked Dumbledore his first and most important question.

"What the _hell_ was that?"

"Language Harry," Dumbledore chided before answering, "That was a memory of myself using a Time Turner to save Miss Abbott's life."

"Time Turner? Save?"

"A Time Turner is a device that uses time-based magic to send the user back in time. Each spin of the hourglass sends you one hour backward," Dumbledore explained, "And as for your second question, it is common knowledge in the healer community that anything that causes petrifaction or loss of bodily functions upon indirect sight will immediately kill upon direct sight. The moment I saw the mirror I knew that the petrifying magic was based on sight, and the fact that the mirror contained my own initials proved to me that I needed to use the time turner-"

"Wait a second Professor," Harry interrupted, "Are you saying that you left a clue for yourself, in form of the mirror, that led you to realize that using the mirror was the thing to do, after which you went back in time and used it to save Hannah's life, while leaving the clue for yourself to find?"

"Indeed" Dumbledore confirmed.

Harry frowned. Was the man being daft on purpose? Did he not see how that didn't make any sense?

"Even the small bit of physics I studied under Nicholas can tell you that it doesn't make any sense. That was a closed time loop sir. Why hasn't the entire world turned into a giant pile of ashes due to space and time collapsing upon itself?"

"Why Harry, magic!" Dumbledore said.

"No no no no no," Harry said indignantly, "I need an explanation that won't hurt my brain for the rest of my life."

"I do hear that lemon drops help with headaches," Dumbledore pointed out, much to Harry's frustration, "Would you like to sample my own?"

"No thank you, sir. An explanation would be much appreciated though," Harry insisted once more.

Dumbledore's eyes lit up with a bright twinkle as he chuckled, "I see that you have once again proven that the Hat wasn't remiss in putting you in Ravenclaw. Very well then. I will try to explain what I know, although I cannot guarantee that you will understand it at all."

"I'd still appreciate the effort,"

Professor Dumbledore's his lips twitched into a small smile, "The reason why paradoxes and self-conflicting events cannot be caused by Time turners is because they cannot go back more than five hours at a time, cannot be reused while inside a time loop and are made in such a way that they cannot break Novikov's Self Consistency Principle."

"The _what_?"

Dumbledore waved a hand, and his cup of tea flew from the fireside table into his hand. He took a sip of it and said, "Novikov's Self Consistency Principle is a principle that says that if an event exists that would give rise to a paradox, or 'change' the past whatsoever, then the probability of that event is zero. It would thus be impossible to create time paradoxes. Time turners are _built_ to exploit that…self-consistency of the universe, so as to speak. You will read more on the theory of time turners after your NEWT years, and suffice it to say, you will understand when you do."

"But what if I don't want to obey the Principle?" Harry asked latching onto the concept, "What if I say, go back in time and kill myself?"

Professor Dumbledore's stare turned grave, "It won't matter if you want to Harry. The universe will take the path of least resistance, and cut you off from existence. So as to speak, the moment you will turn the hourglass of the time turner with the clear and rigid intention to kill yourself and cause a paradox, it would be as if you never existed. You would be… _unborn_."

Harry stared back with wide eyes, "That's…something else."

"Indeed…I strongly advise against messing with time if you ever come across the means of doing so Harry. Time…it doesn't like being tested."

Ping!

 **Due to stretching your brain muscles, take +1 Wis and +1 Int!**

They sat there in silence for a while as Harry collected his thoughts. It was a while before Harry pulled himself together enough to ask the next thing that was on his mind.

"Did something similar happen with Justin and Seamus? Did you…go back in time and save them?"

"No," the Professor replied, "I did not. After the first petrifaction, I alerted all the school ghosts to follow and keep an eye out for students that they find loitering around alone and send them back to their common rooms. Poor Friar must have found the two young gents in the middle of their activities. Not wanting to disturb them, he must have stood guard in front of the broom cupboard, and invariably saved the young lads' lives."

Dumbledore fell back into silence but Harry had another question, "Wait. If you have something like that Time Turner thing, then why don't you just use that to stay in school and protect everyone?"

"Alas Harry, I cannot, since the board has confiscated the Time Turner and returned it to the Department of Mysteries where it came from."

"And Hannah?" Harry asked, letting the last line of conversation drop, and asking about the most disturbing thing he had seen in that memory, "Did you see how she keeled over from nothing? All this time, everyone has been believing that it was some beast that has been petrifying people. But now…"

Oddly, Dumbledore's face spread into a victorious smile, "Now, I have a better idea than ever before about what the beast is."

"You do? How?"

Dumbledore leaned ahead with a conspiratory smile before explaining, "The day after Miss Abbott's petrifaction, I wrote to Nicholas, asking him if he and Perenelle knew of any creatures that caused death upon direct sight and petrifaction upon indirect. They wrote back, listing down all the twenty-five creatures they knew of that could do that. Imagine my surprise, when at the time of reading it, my eyes just slid right off of numbertwenty-twoo down to twenty-four. No matter how hard I tried, I could not, under any circumstances find number twenty three."

Harry frowned confusedly at the headmaster, "I…don't understand."

"You will soon Harry, bear with me for a moment," he said before continuing, "Upon realizing that, I checked the paper for charms and magic, and found nothing. And of course, if there wasn't anything wrong with the letter, there must be something wrong with the reader. The list almost definitely contained the true identity of the beast in number twenty three, but for some reason, I couldn't read it."

"So what does that mean?"

"That means, Harry, that there is a very specific spell at play here, one that fortunately, I am intimately familiar with. It is known as the Fidelius charm. It is an immensely complex spell involving the magical concealment of a secret inside a single, living soul. The information is hidden inside the chosen person, or Secret Keeper, and is henceforth impossible to find, unless, of course, the Secret Keeper chooses to divulge it."

Harry immediately made the connection, "And you think that someone put one of those on the identity of Slytherin's beast?"

"Indeed, and that conclusion led me to my next realization. The realization that Fidelius leaves holes in a person's memories and perception. You must see Harry, that to a well-organized mind such as mine, a hole is more than clue enough. All I had to do after that, was follow the holes in my memories and thoughts, seeing in which places and thoughts I had forgotten things, and I soon found our next clue about the beast."

"What's that?" Harry eagerly asked.

"It is serpentine. The Fidelius will not let my mind get any closer to the actual identity of the creature than that, but the knowledge that it is a serpentine creature that can kill people with a stare is still invaluable."

Harry nodded, although he couldn't really see how that knowledge brought anyone any closer to stopping the beast. Deciding that the workings of Dumbledore's mind wasn't something he had any interest in decoding, he curiously asked, "Do you still have the list sir?"

"Indeed I do Harry," Dumbledore replied. Dipping his hand into one of his many pockets, he pulled out a piece of paper, which he handed to Harry, who quickly read his way down the list to number 22.

 _22)Gorgons_

 _23)%#* &^!%#*&^!_

 _24)Harocatunas_

"You were right sir," Harry said, trying and failing to read it in anyway at all, "It reads number twenty three, and then just a bunch of meaningless jargon."

Harry cast an Observe on it and glanced up for a second to check the observe results. It was just normal paper. For a split second, he thought he saw Dumbledore's eyes widen in shock, but when he looked back up the next instant, it was gone, so he just dismissed it as a figment of his imagination.

He handed the paper back to the Professor, before saying, "You said you would tell me why you called me here…"

"Ah yes!" the Professor said, "The reason why I called you here is to let you know the full extent of the threat that challenges the school, and to tell you that if even one more person gets petrified, the school will be closing down."

"And you want me to stop it from closing down?"

"Of course not Harry. The school will be closing down in a few months for investigation in any case. I want you to make sure that the heir doesn't go on a killing spree _before_ the school closes down." Dumbledore said.

He took a sip of his tea before he continued, "The only reason for the heir to hold back after I will be gone will be Gilderoy Lockhart. His reputation of skill and power rivals my own, and as you know, that is the only reason I hired him as a teacher this year."

"I don't think I like where this is going" Harry muttered.

"I did not think you would," the headmaster sagely said, "However, it is extremely important that Gilderoy's public image remain as invincible looking as it is. Only three people in this school have mental shields powerful enough to come away unaffected if Gilderoy casts a memory charm at them. I will be gone, and Severus cannot follow him around without attracting needless attention. The only person left who would be fully safe around the man is you. I realize that I am asking too much of you Harry, but this might be the only thing that could discourage the heir from going on an out and about rampage. I need you and Miss Hedwig to keep him safe until the school closes down in February."

"Safe!?" Harry's indignant voice reached a new height of pitch. "How am I supposed to keep him safe!? He's planning to jump off a tower!"

"Ah. That little stunt. I do not think you will have any issues with that Harry," Dumbledore said, making Harry seriously question his sanity, "I would recommend trying to discourage him, and if that is not possible, I'm sure Miss Hedwig would easily be able to keep him safe. Again, I say to you that I do realize that I am asking too much of you Harry, but keep in mind that you have unprecedented mobility in and around the school, and that you are one of the best spellcasters Hogwarts has seen in a century. I have complete trust in you."

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Keep Lockhart alive and awesome-looking until the end of January!**

 **Reward,**

 **50,000 Exp**

 **10 stat points**

 **Skill book!**

 **Failure,**

 **Possible death amongst the Hogwarts students**

 **YES/NO?**

It took Harry a few silent moments of consideration, before he simply nodded to Dumbledore and pressed yes onto the quest.

The headmaster gave him a smile before he waved his wand. The suitcase, that had been sitting on the table a bit off to the side, shrunk to the size of a matchbox. Dumbledore stood up, pocketed the now tiny suitcase, pulled out a travelling cloak from one of the claw footed desk's many drawers and made his way over to the large arched window.

"So you are really leaving?" Harry asked, getting up from his own chair and following him.

"Indeed I am Harry," the Professor replied.

"You could stay in the school, hidden," Harry proposed, thinking of the Room of Requirement, "The Governors would never realize it."

Dumbledore shook his head, "I would not be of much use Harry. While my skills with magic are…forgive my lack of modesty…quite considerable, they are useless against a foe that I cannot even sense. I would be of much more help trying to find a way to break whatever form of Fidelius the heir is using, and finding a way to protect the students of my school. Besides, this little gap of time proves to be an invaluable period for myself to investigate the whereabouts of our mutual not-quite-dead acquaintance."

It took a second for Harry to realize who he was talking about, "Voldemort," he whispered comprehendingly.

"Indeed," Dumbledore said, waving his wand and sending the pensieve flying back into its cabinet before opening the window behind him. A majestic looking Fawkes glided into the office, and flew a few circles around the office, trilling an uplifting greeting to Harry.

Dumbledore put on his travelling cloak, and his phoenix companion alighted on his shoulder.

There was a gentle smile on the old man's face as he tipped the brim of his hat to Harry, "And thus Harry, I must take leave of you and Hogwarts, at least for now. Good luck my boy."

"Wait!" Harry hurriedly said, "Why? Why tell me all this…how do you even know that _I'm_ not the heir? How do you know you can trust me?"

There was a short pause before Dumbledore said anything. His eyes noticeably flicked over to Harry's right hand before his smile turned mischievous, and said, "I have a very good feeling that you already know the answer to that Harry. Goodbye."

With a melodious trill from Fawkes, the Professor and his phoenix burst into flames and disappeared from the office. Harry looked around at the empty office, before he brought up his right hand and looked at it.

On the middle finger, innocuously glinting against the firelight, rested the golden ring form of Gandiva the bow.

* * *

It took Harry a few more moments to pull himself together and finally reach the conclusion that Dumbledore knew more about his…extra-normal skills than he had ever expected him to.

After reaching that particular conclusion, Harry decided to immediately wake Hedwig; who had been sleeping blissfully in his pocket through this entire ordeal; and immediately took her help to flame back directly to the Ravenclaw boy's dorm, where he had almost instantaneously been swarmed by his dorm-mates, curious as newborn foxes.

Finding out the reason Dumbledore called him was pretty much the only thing that was on their minds.

"He just wanted to let me know that Fawkes won't be able to help me take care of Hedwig anymore," Harry told his curious house-mates, "Gave me a few tips and all, nothing much"

They took some persuading, but they finally relented and let him be. A few hours later, four of the five boys in the dormitory were fast asleep.

Harry lay awake in his bed, full of nervous tension and energy. His mind was continuously creating, considering and dismissing various grim worst case scenarios.

The school was up against an enemy that not even the most powerful wizard of the age could detect, and the only thing that he knew of that was protecting the school from a killing spree was the reputation of a fraud writer.

Bugger.

Lockhart could somehow get hurt, or he could somehow screwed himself up in such a way that it could become blindingly obvious that he was a fraud, or heck, the heir could just decide that Lockhart wasn't a viable threat any more. An enemy that no one could see, hear or sense in any way…It wasn't exactly hard to see the many ways this entire thing could go tits up.

With a loud huff, Harry sat up in his bed.

He needed to do something. Keep himself a bit occupied. Lying here doing absolutely nothing and letting all the depressing thoughts and scenarios wash over him was doing more harm than good. He had to do something productive with his time.

Pulling up his skill window, Harry scrolled through, looking for skills that needed to be worked on, taking mental notes on how he could use his IDs at night to train up a bit. A quick look at his stat window showed him that he was _incredibly_ close to levelling up,

He was about to close the window when he noticed something.

 **ID Create, Lv-6 (97%)**

 **Used to create Instant Dungeons. Higher the level, stronger the dungeon.**

 **Current list-**

 **Empty Dungeon- no monsters.**

 **Monster Dungeon- Zombies**

 **ID Escape, Lv-6 (97%)**

 **Used to escape from Instant Dungeons.**

Both of the skills were at 97%. He was barely a single use away from levelling up his ID skills.

"ID Create" he muttered, dropping into an empty ID, and again muttered, "ID Escape," exiting right out of the red dimension.

Ping!

 **Due to constant use, a skill has levelled up!**

 **ID Create, Lv-7 (6%)**

 **Used to create Instant Dungeons. Higher the level, stronger the dungeon.**

 **Current list-**

 **Empty Dungeon- no monsters.**

 **Monster Dungeon- Zombies**

 **Restriction Dungeon- Random Opponent Spawn**

Ping!

 **Due to constant use, a skill has levelled up!**

 **ID Escape, Lv-7 (6%)**

 **Used to escape from Instant Dungeons.**

'A new Dungeon!' Harry happily noted as he read through his upgraded skill screens. He now knew what he was going to do tonight. Test out this new dungeon that he'd gotten and find out what the 'random opponent spawn' next to it meant.

Dropping into an empty ID, Harry quickly jumped out of his bed and made his way down the stairs of the common room. Activating Unicorn Boost, he dashed down the tower's spiral staircase and out to the large open clearing a bit off towards the outside the school, which seemed like an ideal place to test out a new ID.

Quickly dropping out of the empty dimension, he muttered, "ID Create: Restriction Dungeon"

The brilliantly shining moon above him turned blood red. The difference between this ID and the others became instantly clear. Unlike the Zombie ID, this Restriction Dungeon had no enemies in it. Instead, the moment Harry appeared in the ID, a large screen popped up in front of him.

Ping!

 **Restriction Dungeon Settings**

 **Restriction: Not set**

 **Exp Multiplier: ?**

 **Projected Stat Upgrades: ?**

 **Projected Skill Upgrades: ?**

 **RANDOM OPPONENT SPAWN**

A minute or so fiddling and experimenting later, Harry figured out what it all meant.

The restriction dungeon was actually a dungeon in which he could set any possible restriction on his powers, so that he could only use certain abilities to fight. The dungeon spawned a random enemy to fight, and then if Harry successfully took out the enemy, it multiplied the Exp, points and level ups he got to his stats and skills depending on how extreme the restrictions were.

So if he set the restriction that he could only use hand to hand combat, then he'd get a points to Str, Dex and Vit, level ups to physical skills, and x2 exp for every kill.

It was clearly an _extremely_ useful tool to do some precision training, and one that he was sure he'd appreciate a lot while trying to train specific skills and stats.

Deciding to be safe for the first time, Harry set the restriction so that he could only use magic. The rest of the blanks in the screen filled themselves up.

 **Restriction Dungeon Settings**

 **Restriction: Can only use magic**

 **Exp Multiplier: x2**

 **Projected Stat Upgrades: Dex, Vit**

 **Projected Skill Level Ups: Wandless Magic**

 **RANDOM OPPONENT SPAWN**

With a deep breath, Harry pressed the spawn button. The screen disappeared, and another, smaller one took its place, with a countdown on it.

 **Random enemy: SLIME BLOB spawn in 3…2…1…**

Harry pulled out his wand, just as the countdown screen disappeared and a massive green blob of what Harry could only guess was slime appeared right across of him on the courtyard. Wider than a Great Hall house table and almost as tall as Harry, it looked gelatinous and disgusting, and gave off a sickly green glow from the inside. Putrid bubbles formed and popped on its skin, releasing a gas so foul smelling that he could smell it clearly 30 feet away. A pair of glowing green orbs, that Harry assumed were its eyes, looked right at him.

Harry quickly used observe on it.

 **Slime Blob**

 **Lv-6**

 **HP:5000/5000**

 **MP:200/200**

 **Str-18**

 **Vit-55**

 **Dex-12**

 **Int-2**

 **Wis-1**

 **Luc-10**

 **A gelatinous blob of living radioactive chemical waste, Slime Blob is an extremely adaptable monster. It can regenerate extremely fast and is immune to physical and fire attacks. It has no known weaknesses, and can only be killed by attacking the central glowing core that holds it together in a powerful gush of water.**

 **Kill to gain: 2500 exp**

Harry waved away the Observe screen and pointed his wand at the blob. " _Aqua Eructo!_ " he incanted, letting loose a powerful jet stream of water from the tip of his wand at his opponent, intending to rip right through the Slime and hit the core.

Much to his surprise, the water did nothing but merely pushed the Slime back a few inches. It was merely deformed, and almost instantly regained its shape.

" _Bombarda!_ "

The explosive spell impacted, but it might as well not have for all the damage it did. Harry watched with wide eyes as the Slime started undulating, giving off strange disgusting sounds. With a loud _slurp_ , a pair of thick tentacles shot out of the Slime's body with the speed of lightning, catching Harry completely off guard and smacking him right in the chest with surprising force, sending him flying back.

 **Warning! Critical hit taken!**

 **HP: 1512/1675**

" _SLURP SMACK SLURP SLURP SMACK!_ " the Slime repeatedly beat its tentacles on the ground victoriously.

Painfully pulling himself back to his feet, wincing against the broken rib, Harry quickly activated his Healing skill and quickly healed the injured bone. A flashing screen suddenly opened up on his screen.

 **Warning! Incoming attack!**

He swiftly dropped to the floor, ducking underneath the two fast approaching swings that came his way, and turned around to look at the Slime.

Much to his dismay, he realized that the slime had quite suddenly decided to erupt half a dozen more tentacles, and had started forcefully swinging them towards him.

Realizing what was about to happen with wide eyes, Harry dropped to a knee and quickly used Geomancy to pull up a thick dome of earth all around himself barely seconds before the tentacles impacted.

 _THUNK!_

He needed a plan, Harry realized as his earthen dome's roof cracked under the sheer inertial force of the Slime's tentacles. Something that would penetrate all the gelatinous stuff encasing that green glowing orb, so that he could kill the monstrosity. If only he was allowed to use his Doom Arrows under the restrictions. They could have worked.

'Wait a minute' Harry thought, 'Don't the arrows qualify as magic? They technically could. Maybe I _can_ use them!'

A plan formed in his head as he swiftly converted Gandiva back into its bow form and notched one of the insanely explosive Doom Arrows. There was no window popping in and saying that he had broken the Dungeon's rules, so Harry assumed that he was safe.

He took a deep breath, knowing that he'd have to time this perfectly.

With a flick of a finger, the earthen dome around him exploded outwards into a dozen pieces, pushing back the barrage of tentacles that was beating down upon it. Harry quickly rose to his feet and took careful aim at the Slime before letting go of the arrow, after which he immediately dropped the bow and pulled out his wand.

BOOM!

The Slime was immune to fire, but it wasn't immune to the concussive force of the explosion. The front of the Slime exploded into chunks, exposing the brightly glowing core. Before it could even start to pull itself back together, Harry took careful aim with his wand and incanted, " _Aqua Eructo!_ "

A jet of water headed towards the glowing ball at Sending out a burst of mana, and Harry used all the skill in Hydromancy he had to boost the stream of water into lethal speeds moments before it hit.

 **Critical strike! Hydro Pump- 1671 x 300% times more = 5013 Attack!**

With a loud boom, the glowing core exploded into a cloud of golden dust, only leaving behind a bunch of pieces of green goo scattered across the ground.

Ping!

 **You have gained a total of 5000 exp!**

Ping!

 **Due to repeated use, you have levelled up a skill!**

 **Wandless Magic Lv- 11 (31%)**

 **Allows you to control your magic in without a conduit. You can try to use it in anyway you wish and it will obey your every command. Has various discoverable branches.**

 **Branches:**

 **Hydromancy: Allows you to control water in any form.**

 **Cost-70 MP per minute**

 **Pyromancy: Allows you to control fire in any form.**

 **Cost-60 MP per minute**

 **Geomancy: Allows you to control earth in any form.**

 **Cost-70 MP per minute**

 **Aeromancy: Allows you to control air in any form.**

 **Cost-80 MP per minute**

Ping!

 **You have gained +2 to Vit and +2 to Dex!**

Ping!

 **You have levelled up!**

 **Harry Potter**

 **Health-1825/1825**

 **Mana-1550/1550**

 **The Gamer**

 **Title-The Boy who Lived**

 **Level-13 Exp-265827/395000**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **STR-33**

 **VIT-26(+4)=30**

 **DEX-24(+4)=28**

 **INT-41**

 **WIS-44**

 **LUC-27**

 **POINTS-21**

 **MONEY- 11025£ / 3177G 188S 56K**

 **Harry Potter is a wizard, the son of Lily Potter and James Potter. He is a new fledgling wizard at Hogwarts. He likes hanging with his new friends and divides his time between figuring out insanely complicated political manipulations and honing his unusual magical skills as the Gamer in secret. Harry loves his parents, and wants to help the world they died protecting.**

 **Status- wizard, giving Harry +4 VIT, +4 DEX and the ability to control magic, talk to snakes, control his appearance and look cool.**

All other worries forgotten in rush of the adrenaline pumping through his veins, Harry quickly waved away the screens, reset the ID settings to physical combat and charged into the spawning horde of zombies with a grin on his face.

* * *

 **Let me know what you thought of the chapter. A bit different, less gamey, more plot focused. How does Dumbledore's characterization seem to you? He always has his own motives, but he has been rather honest with Harry lately. That'll be an interesting arc to write.**

 **Let me know what you thought of the chapter. :)**


	31. Book-II:A Letter Too Many

Chapter 11:

"Alright Ravenclaws, that will do for today," Professor Flitwick said out loud to the class as soon as the bell rang, "Remember to finish your three feet on the charm to make a pumpkin sing a jingle. That will be all for today."

Ping!

 **Charms skill has been evolved due to reaching level 10 on a theoretical skill!**

 **Spell Casting, Lv-10 (85%)**

 **This skill represents the user's skill in the various aspects of casting spells, including but not limited to wand usage, spell casting speed, and spell casting accuracy.**

 **Accuracy: 80%**

 **Speed of Incantation: 200 WPM (Words Per Minute)**

 **Wordless Spell Casting Mastery: 20%**

 **Wandless Spell Casting Mastery: 15%**

"Are you coming, Harry?" came the voice of Terry, who, alongside Hermione, had finished packing his books and was all ready to go off to the Great Hall for some much-deserved lunch. Harry smiled at him, nodding before he waved away the screen and picked up his own book bag, and followed his friends out of the class.

The Charms upgrade wasn't as revolutionary as the Potions Crafting Table, but then again, not much could be. However, it was informational and provided an answer to the question about why he couldn't yet cast _spells_ wandlessly and wordlessly willy-nilly, despite having a wandless magic ability. He had theorized before that his old wandless magic skill was a type of raw manipulation of blunt magic, while wandless silent _casting_ required a greater amount of control to form clean and purposeful 'spells'. That particular logic had some holes in it, but from the looks of it, it was the route that the game was going to follow.

As Harry followed his classmates and lined up in front of a frowning Filch who was tasked with escorting their class to and from the classes, he noted that the Transfiguration upgrade to Transformation Magic had been similarly informative. Harry surreptitiously pulled up his other new skill window to take another look at it.

 **Transformation Magic, Lv-10 (35%)**

 **This skill will reflect your mastery and acumen in the arts of Transfiguration magic, including but not limited to Inanimate Transformation, Animate Transfiguration, Reversion, Conjuration, and Vanishment. This skill will eventually evolve to show the forms of Transfiguration you have mastered.**

 **Learned Branches:**

 **Inanimate Transformation: This refers to any Transfiguration that deforms or alters a non-living target in some way. Mastery: 60%**

This skill was the skill he'd have to work on if he wanted to learn how to 'change his appearance' like it said in his description. Again, informative…but not as revolutionary as the Potions crafting table.

"Hurry up, I've got to take you all to Herbology after you finish with your lunch," barked Filch over the group's heads, and off they marched, with Harry, Terry, and Hermione bringing up the rear.

It had been three whole weeks since Dumbledore had left the school, and they had not been a pleasant three weeks for Harry.

It was common knowledge in the wizarding world that powerful wizards often had magic that affected the people around him. Harry's own ability to fake that effect was proving to be of tremendous use in his quest for making Lockhart appear more powerful. He had started using Hydromancy in Great Hall to slow down the blood flow of the people around Lockhart, triggering the symptoms of low blood pressure, making them lightheaded, just as it would if they were in front of someone with a staggering amount of magical power.

It was working.

The Lockhart skeptics, who had started to grow in numbers as the year had gone on, were now turning into Lockhart worshippers and fans, eating up any outlandish tales that he fed them in his classes. While going to bed every night, Harry was oft left with a horrible feeling in his stomach, knowing that he was helping a fraud become more credible and beloved.

Honestly, he had been trying quite hard to not think of the morality of what he was doing.

As Harry turned the corner and started down the steps of the Grand Staircase, he looked at the group of students around him, fearfully huddled together as they were shepherded by Filch like a bunch of scared sheep.

Harry didn't blame them. With the Headmaster gone, fear had spread over the school as never before, so much so that the sun warming the castle walls outside seemed to stop at the mullioned windows. There was barely a face to be seen in the school that didn't look worried and tense, and any laughter that rang through the corridors sounded shrill and unnatural and was quickly stifled.

One person who was definitely not having a good time, Harry noted as he entered the Great Hall and headed over to his seat to sit down, was Professor Minerva McGonagall.

Looking out of place on the giant golden chair, her hair looked untidy, her eyes had bags underneath them, and despite looking as regal and elegant as ever, the woman looked like she had aged ten years in a few weeks. Harry cast an Observe on her, wondering if she was alright or not.

 **Minerva McGonagall (Status: Acute Insomnia)**

 **(Relationship Meter - 1%)**

 **Lv-50**

 **HP-17050/17050**

 **MP-9025/9025**

 **Race-Witch**

 **Str-14**

 **Vit-22**

 **Dex-22**

 **Int-39**

 **Wis-31**

 **Luc-14**

 **Minerva McGonagall is a witch and a registered Animagus. She has a distinct dislike for dark wizards and is loyal to Hogwarts, where she is Head of Gryffindor House, Transfiguration professor and currently, Headmistress. She is a Master of Transfiguration and enjoys a good bottle of scotch and spending a quiet evening in her quarters.**

 **She is incredibly stressed out right now. She thinks Harry is one of her favorite students, but is not thinking about him right now.**

Trying to ignore that 1% in the relationship meter, Harry quickly pulled up his healing ability and used it on the Insomnia status.

McGonagall sat up a bit straighter in her chair, looking slightly better.

With a small smile, Harry turned and leaned across the table towards Hermione and Terry, who were sitting across him on the table. "Did one of you ask the Hufflepuffs how Ernie is doing?" he asked in an undertone.

For the first few days after Justin and Seamus's petrifactions, Ernie Macmillan hadn't shown up to class for an entire week in a row. The boy was terrified that he was next on the heir's list, despite his pure-blood ancestry. And that terror was justified. If only Muggleborns were being targeted, the rest of the school might have been a bit more at ease. But with Hannah being petrified, the Heir had sent out a message that nobody was safe.

While Ernie did come to some of his classes, he still didn't come to any of the classes with Slytherins, and at his breakfast lunch and dinner in the Hufflepuff Basement itself, refusing to come out at all for anything else.

"I asked Susan Bones at breakfast," Hermione replied, "she said that he still doesn't want to come out for anything other than classes without the Slytherins in them."

"It's _crazy_ that McGonagall is actually letting him do this," Terry commented, nibbling on his bacon.

"His friends got petrified Terry," Hermione said disapprovingly, "he still can't convince Madam Pomfrey to let him see them. I think he's justified to be afraid."

"But even so-"

His rebuttal was interrupted by a shrill screech, and a single black owl appeared through one of the high windows of the Hall. Harry watched as the owl fluttered down between the marmalade and the sugar bowl, and dropped an envelope onto Terry's plate before picking up a piece of his bacon and flying away.

Terry curiously met Harry and Hermione's eyes, before he tore open the envelope and pulled out the letter inside. His eyes widened. His face got paler and paler as he read, and by the time he finished the letter, he was almost bone white. He quickly pocketed the letter, picked up his book bag and jumped to his feet.

"I'll see both of you later," he quickly blurted out, looking entirely too flustered.

"But Terry. What is going on?" By the time Hermione even got her question out, Terry was gone, almost running towards the staff table, where he pulled out the letter and showed it to McGonagall, who frowned, and stood up herself before whispering something to Professor Flitwick.

Then, Harry and Hermione confusedly watched as Terry and the two Professor briskly walked out of the Hall through the side door beside the Staff table.

"What do you think happened?" Hermione worriedly asked.

"I…don't have any idea," Harry muttered, not looking away from the door.

The rest of the lunch had passed in a flurry, and Terry returned soon afterward to join them for Herbology.

When Harry had asked why he had gone off so suddenly, Terry had simply said, "It was nothing. I just got a letter from my mum saying she was a bit ill, so I asked Professor McGonagall if I could Floo her and check on her."

A bell had rung in Harry's ears as soon as Terry finished that sentence.

Ping!

 **Lie detected!**

Harry frowned and stared after Terry, before he decided to let it drop. Maybe it was something personal or family related. The day passed in a flurry of homework and library research and classes, and soon the entire letter incident slipped Harry's mind completely.

* * *

One morning in early-December, Hogwarts woke to find itself covered in several feet of snow.

The lake froze solid and the windows frosted over. The few owls that managed to battle their way through the stormy sky to deliver mail had to be nursed back to health by Hagrid before they could fly off again.

Professor Flitwick came around as usual, collecting names of those who would be staying at school for Christmas. Harry had signed his name on, and was surprised to see that both Hermione and Dean were staying for the holidays. When asked about it, the dark-skinned boy had replied that his mum and dad had to take a trip to the States for work, and unfortunately couldn't wait for school to let out before they left for the trip, and Hermione had replied that her parents too had a work trip that they couldn't miss.

An interesting thing that was happening sometime near the end of November was the sudden appearance of adverts in the Daily Prophet about schools other than Hogwarts.

The Brazilian Castelobruxo, the Russian Koldovstoretz, and the French Beauxbatons adverts were the most prominent, with flashy blue, violet and magenta letters flying across the school's emblems on the paper, highlighting phrases such as 'Safety is a wizarding school's first priority' and 'A day's hard work and a safe night's sleep for our students'.

Hermione had been quite puzzled about why these adverts had suddenly started appearing. "Why would they start advertising in Britain," she asked one day in the Great Hall, "when Castelobruxo and Koldovstoretz don't even accept European students usually?"

"They're trying to pull students away from Hogwarts Hermione," Terry replied in a subdued voice, "And from the looks of it, they aren't doing too badly."

Harry looked around at the rest of the tables at that. Three of the four house tables were abuzz with whispers and discussions about these other schools that a lot of the students had never even heard about.

"I can't believe they'd do that!" Hermione indignantly said, "Instead of helping the school, they are trying to steal students away from it. That's-"

"That's the _expected_ thing to do," Harry cut her off, "Most of the students are scared that the heir is coming for them, and they want to get out of the school. This is the second year in a row students have been put into mortal danger. It makes sense to me that we know that there are other options if we want out."

Apparently, it made sense to a lot of the other students too, since, in the days leading into the Christmas Holidays, rumors spread like wildfire through the school about a number of students having accepted transfer offers from the advertising schools. Professor McGonagall looked more and more distressed, and Harry had to cure her and a number of other teachers from various stress-related ailments almost every single day.

After the last day of classes gave out, Harry, Hermione, Terry, Ron and Dean found themselves in the Project Room, not working on the Game, but instead just lounging around.

It had taken a bit of work, but now the empty classroom that Professor Vector had assigned them for their project work looked much better than the dusty horde room of chairs and desks that it used to be. Two rows of desks were lined up near the two side walls to create a pair of neat massive work surface that was now littered with books and rolls of parchment. A few desks were placed in the center and then transfigured into a neat roundtable for them to sit at. Few of the uncomfortable wooden chairs had been transfigured by Harry in his spare time into a pair of sofas that lay off the center of the room, and the blackboard that stood against the door opposite the door was filled with spells and ideas that they had come up in their spare time.

In between all the chaos of school and the Chamber, this place had turned into their little haven. Just the five of them, doing whatever their heart pleased.

"YES!" Ron exclaimed victoriously at Harry from across the chess board, "How do you like that mate? I just _tonked_ you in that match!"

"The score is seven to four Ronald," Hermione piped in from across the room, where she, Terry and Dean were trying to finish up some of their Christmas homework early, "You don't really get the bragging rights."

"Yet," Ron shot back at her before turning to Harry with a grin, "Get ready to be crushed, Harry. This is the start of my winning streak now."

Harry grinned right back, "We'll see about that won't we Ronniekins?"

A loud knock at the door distracted them from their bantering, and they looked at each other, puzzled. Dean pulled himself to his feet and went over to the door. He parted it open and peered outside to see who it was. Professor Flitwick's voice echoed into the room, "Good afternoon Mr. Thomas. Staying for the holidays I see. Could I borrow Mr. Potter? I'll have him back in a few minutes."

Harry shared a curious look with Ron before he quickly jumped to his feet and headed over to Professor Flitwick.

"Good afternoon Professor," he asked the Professor, closing the door behind him, "How can I help you?"

"Good afternoon Mr. Potter," Professor Flitwick said, "There appears to have been a misunderstanding. You did sign up to stay for the Holidays at the castle did you not?"

Harry nodded.

"I wrote to your guardian Mr. Nick Potter to confirm that, and he said that you were supposed to return for the holidays and hadn't informed him that you would be staying. He is on the Floo in my office right now, and is asking to talk to you."

Harry almost facepalmed right then and there. In all the hustle and bustle of the last month, he had _completely_ forgotten to write to the Flamels and let them know that he'd be staying for the holidays at Hogwarts. "Er…that'd be my fault, Professor."

"I thought so. Come on now Mr. Potter. Let's get this sorted out," Professor Flitwick said, and together they started off towards the tiny Professor's office.

A couple of moving staircases, few corridors, and a low roofed corridor that Harry had never seen later, they arrived at the office.

"I'll give you a bit of privacy. Good luck now Mr. Potter," Flitwick said while opening the door of his office to let Harry in. With a nod, Harry stepped inside into the empty room, locking the door behind him before he headed towards the fireplace that was burning green with Nicholas's face in it, looking completely pissed off.

"Long time no see Nicholas. You look ridiculous without your body," Harry pointed out to the angry frowning immortal wizard, trying to lighten the mood a little bit.

"Not the time Harry," Nicholas severely said, "Get Hedwig to bring you over. Perenelle and I want to talk to you," and with that, his head disappeared, and the fire died down.

Harry warily stared at the fire for a few more seconds, wondering if this was how his friends' parents treated them when they forgot to write home about something important or whether he was getting a worse experience because his own guardians were cranky centuries old people. Deciding not to test them anymore, he poured some mana into his voice and called, " _Hedwig!_ " A ball of fire erupted above him almost instantaneously and coalesced into the form of his best friend, who flew down onto his shoulder and curiously chirped at him.

Harry scratched her neck for a second, before asking, "Could you give me a lift home, girl?"

Getting a trill of acquiescence, Harry grabbed onto Hedwig's tail feathers and they disappeared from the room with a burst of flame. When the fire receded from his vision, Harry was in the Flamel apartment's living room, staring at two frowning Flamels, who somehow managed to look intimidating even when sitting on a sofa.

Hedwig decided that they looked intimidating too, since she immediately took off in the direction of the kitchen in search of a treat, leaving Harry stared indignantly after her, feeling a bit betrayed.

"Sit," Nicholas said, and Harry sat, obliging.

"I realize that you are going through a change right now Harry," it was Perenelle who began, "No longer living with your relatives and living with us is no doubt going to take some adjusting, which is why we have been trying to give you as much space and freedom as possible. But is it honestly too much to expect from you to let us know if you have plans to stay over at your school for the holidays?"

Harry hung his head, "No, it's not, Perenelle. I'm sorry for not writing."

"Apology noted and accepted," Nicholas said, "Now would you please share why in the world do you want to stay at Hogwarts? Aren't all your friends going home for the holidays? What about all that dangerous Heir of Slytherin business that has been going on? And what about you wanting to learn alchemy over the winter break? What happened to that?"

Harry looked up at the only two people he could call family in the whole world, and for a fleeting moment, considered lying through his teeth, before he pushed that thought back, and said, "Dumbledore told me before he left that the school will be closing down for who knows how long before even January comes along. And now, some students are talking about moving to other schools. I know that the two of you have been trying to make me feel at home here. It's worked. This place is more of a home to me than Privet Drive ever was. But you have to understand. Hogwarts is my first home. And I want to stay there for as long as I can before it closes down. I know its illogical and doesn't make sense, but it's the only reason that I have."

'Half-truths' he told himself, 'Not lies. Half truths.'

Ping!

 **Half-truths fall under the category of bullshit buddy, which is why a skill leveled up!**

 **Bullshitting Lv-8 (15%)**

 **A combination of lying and the truth said in a very confident manner!**

Harry waved away the screen, trying to not let his annoyance show on his face. Perenelle and Nicholas exchanged a glance, trying to keep looking strict, but it was obvious that they weren't angry anymore. Perenelle was the one who spoke first, "Fine Harry. I will allow it. You can stay at your school."

A grin spread across Harry's face.

Perenelle smiled, getting up to her feet, "Now let me just pack up some of that fudge Molly sent over for you," she said before heading into the kitchen, leaving Harry with Nicholas, who leaned back into his chair and looked at Harry with an unnerving smirk.

"I've got a couple of question for you little guy," he said, "Exactly how much of that emotional ramble was utter bull, and why should I not tell Perenelle?"

Harry settled a flat look on the man, wondering why he kept insisting on being difficult. He replied flatly, "Blackmailing really isn't your forte old man. You really shouldn't devote as much of your tiny little brain to it as you do. Instead, you should focus those brain cells on keeping track of where your porno collection goes. Who knows where you might…lose it?"

Nicholas's smirk slipped right off his face, and he quickly snapped his fingers. Nothing happened. Looking more and more panicked, he snapped his fingers again and again.

Harry looked on smugly as Nicholas tried in vain to summon the magazines that rested in his Inventory, "Don't waste your magic, Nicholas. You probably forgot where you put them."

At the very moment, Perenelle emerged from the kitchen with a tin of fudge, "Forgot what?"

"Nothing dear," Nicholas quickly assured, sending a baleful glare at Harry. Perenelle handed Harry the tin, and a couple of minutes of goodbyes and subtle glaring later, Harry was back in Professor Flitwick's office. Letting Hedwig flame back to the Ravenclaw tower, Harry opened the door of the office and let Professor Flitwick in, before assuring him that he had smoothed everything over with 'Mr. and Mrs. Potter' and heading back towards the Project Room.

The sun had dipped behind the faraway mountains by the time Harry reached the room, illuminating the sky in a vibrant red. Harry let himself in, only to find Ron snoring away on the sofa, and Hermione, Terry and Dean still working on their homework.

"What took you so long Harry?" Dean asked, to which Harry replied by explaining about the misunderstanding that had happened with his name on his holiday list.

"It's getting late," he added, shaking Ron awake, "We should really get back to our common rooms."

So they all packed up their quills and essays, and headed back to the towers, intending to head in for a long night's sleep. However, as soon as they reached the tower, Hermione realized with a something with a start and turned to Harry for help.

"Harry! I left my Hogwarts a History back there in the room. Could you please just go get it for me? Hedwig could take you and bring you back in a jiffy and I really don't want to go all the way back to the second floor at night time."

And so with a suffering sigh, Harry called for Hedwig and flamed out of the dorm and rematerialized in the Project Room.

Hedwig fluttered over to sit on the back of a chair as Harry quickly picked up the fat copy of Hogwarts a History that belonged to Hermione off the table.

He was about to leave when suddenly something caught his attention through the corner of his eye. A single folded piece of paper lay underneath the pair of desks on which Dean, Terry, and Hermione were doing their homework.

Harry picked it up and smoothed it over, realizing that it was actually a letter addressed to Terry.

Feeling a tad bit curious, he turned it over and started reading what it was about. Harry's eyes widened with shock as he read further and further into the letter, and by the time he finished it, he was filled with an odd mixture of hurt, and betrayal.

"Hedwig!" he snapped at his Phoenix, who quickly flew over to him, and flamed him right back to the Ravenclaw dorm rooms. Harry stormed down into the common room from there, where Terry and Hermione were sitting on one of the desks. Harry slid into a chair at the table and fixed a flat stare at Terry.

"Did you find my book, Harry?" Hermione asked, clearly unnerved by Harry's sudden coldness.

"I did," he said, calmly handing over the book to Hermione.

"You know what else I found," Harry further added, holding up the letter, "This."

Looking like a deer caught in the headlight, Terry's eyes widened and his hand snapped to his back pocket. Feeling nothing other than plain cloth, he slumped into his chair, looking defeated.

Hermione was still looking back and forth between the two of them, even more unnerved at Terry's reaction.

"Do you want to tell her or should I?" Harry flatly asked, trying to keep his Bloodlust skill out of his voice.

Terry looked at Harry, defeated, before he turned to Hermione and said, "Do you remember that letter I got Hermione? The one that I got a couple of weeks back and went to see the Professors about?"

"Yes," Hermione tentatively replied.

"It was…you have to understand!" Terry pleaded, glancing at Harry, "My mum works in the ministry and she has been hearing all these rumours going around about the Aurors offices for _months_ now. She's been scared for me all this time. So when she saw those adverts from those other schools, she did it."

"Terry," Hermione asked dreadingly, "What is in that letter?"

"This letter is the final acceptance letter from Beauxbatons," Harry answered that question, "Terry is no longer a student of Hogwarts. Hasn't been for over two weeks. He is now a proud student of Beauxbatons, and will be joining there for his third-year education in the next year."

" _What!_ " Hermione said in shock.

Terry looked more flustered and desperate than ever before, "You have to understand Harry! Hermione! I didn't know about it! She did it all behind my back. Removed my name from Hogwarts and enrolled me into the other school. I only found out about it the day I got the acceptance letter. I even had Professor McGonagall Floo her so that I could try and convince her to reverse it."

Hermione seemed lost for words as she rested her head in her hands. Silence reigned in the common room, and for once, the pleasant warm fire seemed a tad bit too hot.

"You could have told us earlier Terry. We would have found something or the other to help." Harry gently said, breaking them out of their silence, his voice devoid of any coldness or anger that had been present earlier.

Terry shook his head and Harry idly noticed that there were tears in his eyes, "There was nothing to be found. You should have seen Professor McGonagall trying to find some loophole or bylaw that would've let me stay. She looked through _dozens_ of books. Nothing. And how could I even bring myself to tell you?"

"Ron and Dean are going to be crushed," Hermione muttered into her hands.

"I know," Terry miserably said, and they lapsed back into another heavy silence.

"So is this goodbye then?" Harry ask

"You could get Hedwig to pop over with letters. And you can always come visit during the summer,"

"But it won't be the same"

"No it won't."

And it was at that moment, sitting safely in the warmth of his common room, away from any Beast of Slytherin that could cause him harm, that it sunk into Harry that the Heir had managed to hurt him in a more permanent way than any sort of petrifaction or physical attack could.

He had lost him a best friend.

* * *

Dean and Ron had not taken well to the news next morning. That particular meeting had been louder, and distinctly more hostile than last night's meeting, and had ended in Ron storming right out of the room.

By the time the noon rolled around, Ron and Terry were gone, Hermione had shacked herself up in her dorms and Harry and Dean found themselves sitting in the Project Room, desperately wanting to do something to distract themselves from everything else going on around them, and yet not being able to do anything at all.

"It's all happening too fast," Harry muttered, sighing deep into his hands.

"What's that?" Dean quietly asked from across the room.

"It's…It's nothing. Don't worry."

Dean frowned, and walked over to sit beside Harry on the sofa, "Are you alright Harry?"

"I don't know Dean," Harry muttered, "I had this whole utopian world that I had imagined when I climbed aboard that train a year ago. And for a while, it seemed to be exactly that. I learned awesome magic here at a school that's become my home. I made some great friends. It wasn't perfect, but it was the best thing that's ever happened to me."

Harry took a deep breath.

"And now…now it's all just happening too fast. My friends are leaving. The school is closing down, people are getting petrified…feels like everything I built around me is crumbling down." A miserable sounding chuckle escaped him, "Probably sounds like a mighty exaggeration to you doesn't it?"

It was all quiet for a few seconds, and Harry didn't dare look at Dean's face.

"No…No. I think I understand" Dean finally said quietly before pausing, almost as if debating something with himself. It was another few seconds before he spoke, "Not the first time my world's turned upside down you know."

Harry frowned, and turned to look at Dean, "What do you mean?"

"Remember that flying class we had last year? The one in which Neville got injured? Sometime after that, I got a letter…from my dad. Dunno where it came from or how it got delivered, but I woke up the next morning to find it beside my bed."

A stone seemed to suddenly fall into Harry's stomach "Your dad?"

Dean nodded, before he dipped his hand into his trouser pocket and pulled out a familiar looking yellowing envelope which he hesitantly handed to Harry, who tried to keep his expression even as he opened it.

 _Dearest Son,_

 _This letter would have found you only if I were no longer alive. And if I am indeed dead, I do not wish to die without you ever knowing about me. So let me introduce myself. My name is Johnathon Armin Wright. I am your father. There are so many things I want to tell you that I honestly do not know where to start now, but I suppose the beginning would be as good a place as any._

 _I am a wizard, my son. I was once a young Hogwarts student like you must be now, and upon graduating from Hogwarts with high results, I joined the Auror forces, In the summer of 1980, while on a routine patrol through muggle London, I met your mother, and we fell in love._

 _At that time, the wizarding world was in a state of emergency, and the terror-striking Death Eaters were actively attacking and recruiting. Their policy was simple. You were either with them, or you were dead. Aurors are highly trained wizards, which is why the Death Eaters often tried to recruit them. Being a modestly skilled Auror myself, I knew that it wouldn't be long before they came for me._

 _Fearful of their wrath, I didn't reveal myself as a wizard to your mother for the time that we spent together and did my best to keep her safe from the Death Eaters. However, that effort was all in vain, and one day while returning home to your mother, they got to me._

 _The choice was simple. I would either join them, or they would end me and those I hold dear. I begged them for a few days' time, and used that time to fake my death, hoping that it was distraction enough for them to leave your mother alone. It fooled everyone. My parents, your pregnant mother, the Ministry…everyone._

 _Everyone except He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named._

 _He knew. It took him months, and when he found me, sicced his werewolves on me and left me bleeding and almost dead. Suffice it to say, I did not expect to survive the night. I expected to die then and there._

 _I didn't._

 _I knew the moment I woke up the next morning with all my wounds healed that I had now turned into a monster. That I could never return to your mother and you._

 _There is not a day that I do not think about you two. I found out through one of the few friends I have left that she got remarried, and that you have sisters now. I wish her nothing but the happiest of lives. I hope you are having the best of times at Hogwarts, and that you have made many lifelong friends. Most of all, I hope you are happy._

 _I promised myself that I would keep this letter short, which is why I must end it here. I've written many other letters like this one and kept them all in one envelope, so if you have found one, then you must have found them all. I hope you will read them all one day, for I have so much more to say. But for now, this will have to do._

 _Stay safe, and be good to your mother my son. I love you._

 _Your father,_

 _John Wright_

"For a while, it was bad," Dean said as Harry folded up the letter, trying not to let the wetness in his eyes show. "I couldn't sleep right, and couldn't eat right. Couldn't really process that my father was actually alive for all this time. I was angry for a while, and then I was so very sad. But then I learned to see what was important Harry. That my dad wasn't just any bloke. He was a wizard. A brave one. He loved me, and he sacrificed himself trying to save my mum and me Harry. He was a hero."

He took a breath, and then looked Harry in the eyes, "I know you're not exaggerating Harry. I understand how you feel."

Harry simply nodded, trying to ignore the violently sick twists of guilt that were ripping through his stomach.

* * *

The days of the winter passed in a flurry of searching through the Hogwarts library for any skill books and continuous attempts at subtly making Lockhart look powerful The Christmas holidays didn't feel quite as cheerful this year as they did the last time, despite the teacher's attempts at doing so.

Thankfully, the heir seemed to be sharing in the Christmas spirit, since there were no petrifactions in the week leading up to Christmas, and the only thing that was even mildly interesting happened when a regal eagle owl that had landed on his soup on Christmas Eve dinner and handed him a letter that he was not expecting.

 _HP,_

 _My apologies for not meeting with you much this year, but suffice it to say that it was not without reason._

 _Father has increased scrutiny on me to ridiculous levels and has bribed Crabbe and Goyle into reporting my every movement to him. When I asked him about it, he simply replied that it was for my safety, but I don't think I quite believe him. The only reason I was even able to write to you is that father wanted me to convince you to come to the Ball this year again._

 _Its honestly up to you, but I will ask you to accept. Father might be insulted if you don't, and that is usually a bad thing. Besides, the party will be better, because mother has planned the party around this new animal sanctuary that has opened up, and we're going to be raising money for the sanctuary. The sanctuary has offered to display a lot of its animals at the party for the guest's pleasure. Salamanders and other rare animals and all that jazz So it'll be a bit less bland and more fun than last year._

 _I think that will do it for this letter. I was supposed to stay at Hogwarts this year, but with the Heir somehow targeting half-bloods as well instead of just Muggleborns as the legends say, mother got a bit worried and had me return home for Christmas._

 _I hope to talk to you later in the Ball._

 _DM_

Also contained in the envelope was a smaller letter, written on more expensive parchment.

 ** _Heir Potter_**

 ** _With great honor, we would like to request for your presence on the Christmas evening this year for the Annual Malfoy New Year's Ball._**

 ** _The venue for the said event will be at the Malfoy Manor in Wiltshire and dress code will be formal robes with the theme being 'Beast'. We wish that you will find time for you to be present on the party. Please let us know whether you can or cannot join us for whatever reason._**

 ** _Hoping to receive an acceptance letter at your earliest convenience and to see you in the ball._**

 ** _Best Regards,_**

 ** _Lucius Malfoy_**

 ** _Head of The Most Noble House of Malfoy_**

And so when Christmas morning dawned, cold and white, Harry was woken very early by Hermione, who burst in, fully dressed and carrying presents.

"Wake up," she said loudly, to the otherwise empty boy's dorm, pulling back the curtains at the window.

"Urgh," Harry grumbled, shielding his eyes from the light, "Hermione, you're not supposed to be in here you know"

"Merry Christmas to you, too! Up you get now, Dean will be waiting for us in the Hall," said Hermione cheerfully, and Harry gave her a small pitying glance.

The girl had taken Terry's leaving the worst. For the first few days, she refused to come out of her dorms for anything other than food. And after that, she had suddenly turned completely cheerful and normal. It hadn't taken Harry or Dean too long to realize that she had decided to completely ignore what had happened and was trying to act normally. Not knowing what else to do, they simply decided to go along with it and let her come to terms with it in her own time.

Harry's Christmas presents did a lot to brighten his day.

Hagrid's treacle fudge, combined with the Weasley's gift of homemade chocolate cake and a green hand-knit sweater were beyond awesome. The lot of ancient books from the Flamels were very much appreciated, as were the works and chocolates that his friends had sent him, although Harry did feel a twinge of sorrow as he read through the book on Dragons that Terry had given him.

The Great Hall looked magnificent.

Not only were there a dozen frost-covered Christmas trees and thick streamers of holly and mistletoe crisscrossing the ceiling, but enchanted snow was falling, warm and dry, from the ceiling.

Lockhart was leading the students that stayed through a few of his favorite carols, and Hagrid was booming more and more loudly with every goblet of eggnog he consumed. Hermione and Dean had decided to head back to their common rooms as soon as they finished breakfast, not wanting to torture their ears anymore. The promise of infinite Christmas pudding was too good for Harry to pass up though, and so he stayed.

Harry had barely finished his seventh helping of Christmas pudding when suddenly he caught sight of who was skipping towards his spot on the table, and a foreboding chill traveled down his spine.

"Oh hello, Mr. Toadinger! How do you do?" the blonde merrily asked while plonking herself down next to Harry.

"Um…"

"I'm doing fine as well Mr. Toadinger," she carried on, "Thank you for asking. The Nargles haven't come after me since you fended them off for me, and I really wanted to thank you for that."

"Er…You're welcome…?" Harry tentatively replied.

Luna gave him a wide grin, before bringing her hand up to scratch Harry behind his ears, making her bottlecap necklace jingle around. Harry's left eye developed a severe twitch before he gently pushed her hand away from his face and forced the twitch to stop, making her frown a bit.

"I wanted to say thank you, but I didn't really know what Umdingering Toadingers liked to eat, so I just had my daddy add you to a year's subscriptions for the Quibbler," Luna continued, pulling out a garishly purple copy of the Quibbler and handing it to Harry.

"Thank you," Harry automatically replied as he looked at the featured article on the cover.

 _EXCLUSIVE!_

 _Fudge pregnant with Mongoose babies!_

 _Read the Mongoose's testimony about how he was forced to impregnate Fudge!_

 _Article by Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Seas and Conqueror of the British Empire in The United Kingdom in General and Wales in Particular Sir Xenophilius Lovegood the Second._

 _Only on Quibbler Christmas Special Edition!_

Harry's eye twitch somehow mysteriously decided to re-emerge and was showing no signs of receding. Luna simply gave him one last pat on the head before getting up and skipping off to who knows where.

The only other thing of note that had happened on the Christmas day was the half a dozen people who had started setting up a large golden net looking thing under the tallest tower. When Harry had asked one of them what it was all about, he had come to know that it was for the Publicity stunt that Lockhart planned to hold in the first week of January. Harry's observe on the net had finally alleviated his worries about having to somehow save Lockhart from the fall.

 **Enchanted Industrial Grade Breaking Safety Net**

 **A very powerful enchanted safety net capable of protecting people from any injury after falling from great heights by limiting the distance they fall, and deflecting to dissipate the impact energy. Charmed to be Unbreakable, this net can catch a falling overweight troll from a height over 700 meters without any harm to the subject at all.**

And so, with quite a few worries off his chest and feeling overall better and happier than when he had woken up in the morning, Harry headed off towards the Ravenclaw tower.

However, his happy mood wasn't to last. About halfway to the tower in a third-floor corridor, a bunch of urgent muffled voices from a nearby classroom caught his attention. Harry frowned before he put his ear against the door and listened to what was going on.

"For the last time," a weak trembling voice said, "I am _not_ the Heir. You are making a mistake. When Snape-oomph"

A sudden thump of flesh meeting flesh and a sudden crack echoed through, and the voice shut up completely.

"Oh shit!" another, a deeper voice said, panic evident in his voice, "Oh no no no! He's bleeding Richard! Is he dead? Please tell me he's not dead!"

"Shut up and check his pulse Rudy!" another panicky voice snapped at the first.

There was a small silence before either of them spoke.

"He's alive. Knocked out I think. But this is it, Richard. You wanted to rough the kid up, you roughed him up. I'm out now. I can't be tied back to this. My mum would kill me. I'm leaving, whether you're coming or not."

Footsteps started towards the door. Harry quickly pulled out his Invisibility Cloak from his inventory and covered himself, pressing himself against the wall just as a seventh year Gryffindor slammed the door open and ran off in the direction of the Gryffindor tower. The second one soon followed.

"Stop! Wait for me!"

Harry debated for a second between following the Gryffindors and checking on whoever had been injured, before he promptly stuffed his Cloak into the Inventory and headed into the classroom, stopping short as soon as he realized who it was.

The prone body of Theodore Nott lay against the wall, a trail of blood from his head dripping onto the floor. His legs were bent at an odd angle, and bruises and scratches were littered all over him. From the looks of it, this was another one of those Slytherin bullying events.

Harry started forward to heal him before he stopped himself.

This was someone who was actually likely of being the heir. Every single person that had gotten petrified had pissed Nott off before they were attacked. Even if Except this time the bullies had somehow gotten someone that was actually likely of being the Heir

Harry looked at the prone form of the Nott heir lying on the floor. He doubted that his Observe could give him enough information to know whether or not Nott was the Heir, but he could just use that Legilimency spell.

There was only a moment's hesitation before he pulled out Riddle's wand. " _Legilimens!_ "

Ping!

 **Error: Target has a higher Mind Arts skill level {Level 8} than User. Legilimency attack failed!**

' _What!_ ' Harry was shell-shocked. It took him a while to think of anything other than the fact that there was an actual person in his own year that had better Mind Arts skill than _he_ did.

Trying to not directly jump to the conclusion that Nott _was_ actually the heir, Harry instead came up with a different plan.

He'd just heal his head injury and stop his bleeding, and then he'd leave it up to Madam Pomfrey to heal his legs and other injuries. That would take at least a couple of days to heal, during which he could practice and level up his Mind Arts skill in the Restriction Dungeon, after which, he'd sneak into the Hospital Wing, and read Nott's mind about whether or not he was the Heir.

Yes. That could work.

Resolving to work with that plan, Harry dropped to his knees beside the unconscious boy, pulled up his healing ability and quickly used it to remove the Bleeding and Unconsciousness ailments.

Nott woke up with a groan just as Harry was about to prop him up against the wall. As soon as he saw who was helping him, his face curled into a sneer, "What the fuck are you doing Potter!? Let go of me!"

"Stop being difficult Nott. I'm trying to help you," Harry said, propping him up properly against the wall before pulling out his handkerchief out to wipe the blood off of Nott's face.

"I don't want your help!" Nott said aggressively, pus Leave me the fuck alone!"

"But-"

"Just get lost, Potter!" Nott snapped, "I don't want your help!"

Harry was getting seriously annoyed now, "What is your _problem_!? I'm trying to help you, and you're going and acting like a complete dickhead!"

And Nott seemed to snap.

"My problem!" Nott snarled, "You want to know my _problem_! You! You're my problem! You are the reason my mother is dead you bastard!"

"What are you even talking about Nott!"

But Nott wasn't listening to him anymore. With a crazed look in his eyes, he kept talking on, "She had done _nothing_ wrong, and you and your _Light_ side killed her! You will die too you bastard! You and your mudblooded friends. One day the Dark Lord will rise again, and when he does, I will be there by his side, avenging my mother's death. And you will beg for mercy on your knees before me, just like your mother groveled in front of the Dark Lord!"

Harry had had enough. Quick as a snake, his hand darted out, grabbed Nott's head and slammed it into the wall, knocking him unconscious again. With a frown, Harry cast an observe on him.

 **Theodore Nott (Status: Unconscious, Concussion)**

 **(Relationship Meter - 0%)**

 **Lv-5**

 **HP-350/350**

 **MP-160/160**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-6**

 **Vit-5**

 **Dex-5**

 **Int-6**

 **Wis-3**

 **Luc-2**

 **Theodore Nott is a half-blood wizard, though only he and his father know it. His father lied about his wife being a pureblood so that he could marry her. Theo is the only heir of the Nott family. He was trained in Occlumency to hide his blood status and act just like a pureblood. His mother was killed in an Auror raid months after his birth, which is why he hates the 'Light' side with a burning passion.**

 **He has masqueraded for his whole life as a pureblood and is scared that the Heir of Slytherin will find out about his ancestry and come for him. He hates Harry.**

Harry's eyes widened as he looked at the prone form of the boy and the Observe screen. Nott was a half-blood! And he was definitely not the heir of Slytherin! The reason his mind arts level was higher than him was that he he'd been learning it his whole life.

Feeling a small surge of guilt, Harry quickly used his healing ability a few times to heal all of Nott's injuries other than his Unconsciousness.

Putting on his Invisibility Cloak and pulling out his wand, he cast, " _Enervate_ " at the boy, and before he could fully regain his senses, Harry quietly slipped out of the room.

* * *

On the evening of the New Year's Eve, Harry slung on his best robes, looking significantly more dapper with robes that actually were made to fit him, and headed up to Lockhart's office, who, as Professor McGonagall had told him, had apparently gallantly offered to escort him to the Malfoy Ball. Trying not to look like he had eaten a particularly sour lemon, Harry knocked on the wooden door.

Lockhart's face greeted him as soon as he opened the door with a large grin, dressed in robes of gold and silver, looking more like a human light bulb than anything else.

"Come on in Harry!" he exclaimed, ushering Harry into the office and closing the door behind him, "This is going to be so much fun. You and me heading off together to one of the most high profile parties in the entire magical Britain!"

"Any particular reason you want to free-ride me and get into the party Gilly?" Harry asked, a bit salty at having to deal with Lockhart for the rest of the New Year's evening.

"I thought we were past the name calling Harry," Lockhart said disapprovingly before exclaiming, "And of course there is a reason! The sales of my latest book _Magical Me_ are going down fast, and my editor is pissed off to high heavens about it. A little appearance in the Malfoy party and a few pictures with you and the minister will definitely boost the sales enough to keep me afloat for the next month until the school closes down and I can get back out there for signings and book tours."

Harry sighed. Of course, it was another publicity thing. Lockhart had quite the penchant for those. He impatiently asked, "Do we leave now or is there anything else left to do?"

"One moment," said Lockhart, dabbing some Sleakeazy's hair potion onto a toothbrush and combing it through his hair before putting it down and turning towards Harry, "All done. Now young man, I'm supposed to tell you that you are to maintain a proper and appropriate demeanor all throughout the ball and not stay long after the New Year bell rings, but I'm sure that we can bend the rules for you a bit, Harry. Just grab the Floo powder and head in when you're ready. I'll follow through."

Harry picked up the powder, and idly recalled the last time he had headed into the floo for this party. The last time he had been there, he had wanted to use Malfoy to solidify his own future political power. Now, in the light of recent events, including the petrifactions and Terry's leaving, Harry had found that he had quite a bone to pick with the blond pure-blood magnate. As such, using this occasion to humiliate and take down his reputation almost felt like the natural thing to do.

Dumbledore _had_ once mentioned that his father James used to be quite the big prankster. Harry wondered if the genes had passed down to him at all.

Oh well. He'd soon find out.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert**

 **Fuck up the Party as hard as you can!**

 **Reward,**

 **50,000 Exp**

 **5 stat points**

 **New Perk!**

 **Failure,**

 **-2 Level to Politics**

 **YES/NO?**

Pressing yes on the quest with a calm smile, Harry walked into the fireplace, ducking to avoid hitting the mantelpiece. He stared through the green flames flickering around him as he clearly intoned the Floo address.

" _Malfoy Manor"_

And he was off.

* * *

 **A nice way to give the villain power isn't it? Terry's transfer sort of drives home the point that while the Heir might not be magically powerful, but he sure as all hell has the power to hurt Harry. Do let me know what you thought of the chapter.**


	32. Book-II:Comedy and Tragedy

Chapter 12:

Harry and Lockhart stepped out of the fireplace near the Malfoy and let the derelict looking house elf use its brush to dust the ashes off their robes.

With a spike of guilt, Harry remembered his promise about finding a way to give the house elves a choice to be free that he had made to himself ages ago. 'After the school closes down,' he promised himself, and let the elf lead them up the stone staircase and into the ballroom.

The room couldn't have been more different from the way it was the last time Harry had been here. There were no torches lighting the hall, instead, the lighting came from what appeared to be hundreds of brightly glowing butterflies of various colors fluttering around near the level of the roof. Instead of streamers, decorative vines hung from the ceiling, and most of the guests looked utterly ridiculous, their formal attire clashing with the animal-themed accessories that they sported.

But most notably, many large glass cages lined the walls, filled with creatures of all sizes and colors. One contained a massive kneazle, and another a bunch of crups. A bunch of nifflers moved around restlessly inside one, and an Orangutan sat chewing on his apple inside another. The whole room looked like an overly posh zoo.

Before Harry could get a good look at all the cages, however, he caught sight of their host and tensed. Lucius Malfoy had walked over to greet them.

"Mr. Potter. Mr. Lockhart. I am glad you could make it tonight." The subtle, almost inaudible tone of respect the man's voice held when he spoke Harry's name confirmed to Harry that the Obliviate still held the man and that he was safe here for now.

"Lucius! What a wonderful Ball you have put together. Almost as good as the Ball I once planned for a Veela colony in France. Good stuff, good stuff," Lockhart said as he joyously grabbed the man's hand and shook it vigorously, before he caught sight of something and perked up like a meerkat, "Is that the Minister? Oh dear. Forgive me my good man, but I must go greet him."

As they watched Lockart hold onto his hat and jog off into the crowd towards the Minister of Magic, Harry, forcing a friendly tone, asked, "Are you very familiar with Professor Lockhart, Mr. Malfoy?"

Lucius's face seemed stuck in a look of bewildered amusement, "Quite the contrary. Never met the man in person before. Is he always this excitable?"

"More or less."

Lucius dropped the topic of the Defense professor and turned to Harry, "So how have you been doing Mr. Potter? Terrible business, what with the students getting petrified left and right. It must be really hard living in the castle now."

"I've been doing fine. There are bad days, but what can one do but get over them," Harry said, before asking, "There have been rumors about the school closing down…well, I suppose they are not rumors anymore. One can only wonder how long the shutdown will last. You're on the school board aren't you, Mr. Malfoy? I bet you know how long it will last."

"You overestimate my reach Mr. Potter," Lucius genially said, "I'm merely a board member. The decision to close down the school was taken by the Ministry."

"Oh do stop being humble Mr. Malfoy," Harry said, putting a sly smile on his face, "I bet you'd know if a fly sat on the wrong person in the Ministry."

Lucius chuckled, "You are pertinacious. I've heard from the Education department and Aurors; _heard_ mind you; that it might be closed for a few months. They won't know exactly until they go in and see what needs to be done."

"Well it is a relief to know that it is not permanent or something like that"

"I doubt anyone would stand for it if it was permanent. The Wizarding world wouldn't really be the Wizarding world without Hogwarts," Malfoy said, before he caught sight of someone in the crowd, "I must take your leave now Mr. Potter. The people from the animal sanctuary will soon be taking some of the guests for a tour of the animals before the New Year's countdown. Please enjoy yourself."

Ping!

 **Skill has leveled up due to interacting with an experienced politician!**

 **Politics Lv- 4 (20%)**

 **This is your ability to maneuver in political situations by methods of persuasion, blackmail, guile and manipulation. The higher the level, the more chance of success!**

 **(Lv of Lying + Lv of Bullshitting)% chance of success, less based on how extreme the motive is.**

Harry smiled as he watched the man walk off to greet the Goyles, who had just arrived. That had gone much smoother and better than he had ever expected. He hadn't even had to use any Hydromancy, which was well and good, since using blood control on people with their own powerful magic was harder than it had any right to be.

Harry headed to the drinks bar, greeting a few other guests along the way, where he grabbed himself a drink and sat down on one of the barstools, watching the adults dance in the butterfly light, wondering where he should start buggering everything up.

It had to be something related to the animals, he decided, if only because it would be a crime not to do something related to them after the Malfoys spent so much time setting them up.

The beginnings of a plan started forming in his mind, and he pushed himself off the barstool and headed towards the cage holding what looked like a three-headed Runespoor to test his initial hypothesis.

"Observe," he muttered, focusing on the glass and trying to ignore the conversation amongst the snakes about which head could rhyme the fastest.

 **Unbreakable Glass**

 **Transparent glass that is enchanted to not break, no matter how hard it is impacted upon. Used for a variety of purposes. Since unbreakable charms do not have easily usable counterspells, they are often built with a specific failsafe to shatter them down completely when removal is required.**

 **Failsafe: Small explosion near the bottom left corner**

Harry grinned. This was _beyond_ convenient. This was downright begging to be used.

"That's the one that father likes the most," came a voice from beside him, "Do you like it?"

It was Draco, Harry realized when he turned and checked before answering, "I think it's a bit creepy myself, but it's really curious how it ever gets anything done with three heads arguing amongst themselves all the time."

"It's been a long time since we last talked Harry," Draco said, "Are your new guardians treating you well?"

"They have. It has been a bit surreal, but they are good people," he honestly answered before asking, "And how have _you_ been Draco?"

Draco's eyes gained an uneasy look, "Not good. The other students have been bullying any Slytherins they can get alone, so I have to stick together with the others and stay inside the dorm. Then there are the half-bloods getting petrified. So now we have to worry about the Heir as well since no one knows whether he's just started on a killing spree or not."

"Let's hope not," Harry said, before changing the topic, "In your letter, you mentioned something about your father not wanting you to meet me. What was that all about? Didn't your father _want_ you to get close to me?"

Draco shuffled around a bit, looking a bit uncomfortable, "It's not really just you. Students from _every_ other house have been beating up Slytherin students and getting away with it. Father wanted me to completely keep away from other house students, no exceptions."

"And you don't believe that he's doing it just for your safety?" Harry asked with a frown.

The blond's face grew even more uncomfortable, "I…It was something about the way he put it in the letter. It seemed…pre-written somehow. Like he had written this letter a while back and was sending it to me months later. I don't know. It was probably just me."

It took Harry seconds to process that information. Malfoy must have written that warning letter to his son _before_ Obliviating himself of the knowledge of how he got the heir into Hogwarts. "Is there any way you can get that letter to me? Maybe I could take a look and see if it was just you or not?"

Draco shook his head, "He had me burn the letter the moment I finished reading it. Even put one of those compulsion charms onto it to make sure I did put it into the fire."

'Damn it!' Harry thought.

A pleasant voice echoed across the hall at that moment, "Attention, please. All the guests interested in a guided tour of the lovely Scamander Sanctuary Creatures please join your guide Mister Booplesnoot near the entry door in five minutes. Thank you for your time, and have a good evening"

"I think I'll go. I haven't seen most of the animals here yet. Will you be coming, Harry?" Draco asked as soon as the announcement finished.

It was time to start the set up for his pranks, Harry thought as he replied, "I will. I'll just pop over to the loo for a bit before meeting you near the entrance for the tour, alright?"

After getting a nod from Draco, he headed out of a side door into the bathroom, where he shut himself in, before muttering, "ID Create."

The sky outside turned red, and Harry quickly converted Gandiva into its bow form, before he notched a Doom arrow. Instead of firing it, he picked the explosive arrow up and set it to the side, before repeating it a couple of dozen times. After he had all the arrows he needed, he returned Gandiva to its ring form, before turning to the arrows and started to remove their arrowheads.

He was left with a couple of dozen explosive arrowheads, upon which he used _Reducios_ to shrink and reduce their effects from huge explosions to a tiny concentrated hot blast.

When they were all as small as the size of his fingertips, he put them in an inventory box. It read,

 **27 minimized explosive arrowheads**

Satisfied with his preparation, Harry dropped out of the ID and made his way out of the loo and to the entrance of the Ballroom to join Draco, Mr. Booplesnoot and half a dozen other guests who joined them. Harry could see Parkinson and Greengrass in the group as well, but they were religiously ignoring Harry, so he simply followed suit and ignored them, sticking close to Malfoy, Crabbe, and Goyle.

"Velcome efferybody!" Mr Booplesnoot exclaimed in a heavy German accent, "Totay ve shall be taking a tour of the farious animals of the Zanctuary zat ve haffe brought here, and ve vill learn zome zings about zem. It vill be fun. Do ve haffe efferyone for zis batch here? Let's go zen!"

And with that, they started towards the first animal cage.

"The first animal you are zeeing here," he said, pointing towards the giant reptilian creature with a tail as long as its body and armoured scaly skin resting on a rock in a glass cage, "He is Quasimodo the magical Komodo Drakon. He is the last of his kind on the world. Muggles haffe discoffered his non-magical couzins, but zey cannot find him becauze of one reazon. Let me show you vat zat is."

He rapped the front of the glass cage with his knuckle, and in the blink of an eye, the Komodo dragon vanished.

"You zee!" Mr. Booplesnoot exclaimed, "He can turn invizible. Zat is hov zey catch prey and escape predators. Unfortunately, in zeir home island of Rinca near Indonezia, zey haffe peen hunted down by magical farmers who zink zey are a pest. Quasimodo is nov being prepared to be introduced into a breeding program."

"Do they have venom?" Daphne Greengrass asked.

Mr Booplesnoot smiled impishly, "Zey do, but it is of no real danger to wizards. If one of zem bites you, the only zing zat vill happen is zat you vill become very…Vat is the word…Amorous for a few minutes. The only zing it is venomous to is romantic relationships."

"Isn't that the only one of his species? I wonder what they will breed them with," Harry heard Goyle ask Crabbe behind him.

"They'll probably have to cross it with something cool. Like a Nimbus 2001," Crabbe replied, probably louder than he intended.

"As fantastic as it zounds, unfortunately young zir, zat is not pozible. We vill haffe to breed him vith one of his non magical couzins," Mr Booplesnoot replied with a grin over the chuckles of the group.

Harry quietly used a sticking charm to stick an explosive arrowhead to the corner of the front of the glass cage, getting a window to pop up.

Ping!

 **Quest 'Fuck up the Party as hard as you can' has progressed.**

Harry waved the screen away, and soon they headed over to the next cage, in which stood the massive kneazle Harry had seen earlier. It had a spotted fur coat and was the size of a small golden retriever, an unusual size for a kneazle.

He soon learned why.

"Aww!" Parkinson squealed, "A kneazle!"

"Not guite miss," Mr. Booplesnoot said, "Zis is a Nundu cub. It is barely a month old."

The entire group froze.

"A N-nundu?" someone from the back stuttered out.

Mr Booplesnoot nodded, "Ja. His name is Fred, and he is a East African Nundu. He vas captured ven his mother vas killed to protect the villages zere from her attacks. The pads under his feet make zure he moves zilently despite his size ven he grows up. The breath of the grown Nundu is toxic and filled vith dizeaze, but Fred here is fery young, zo he doezn't have zat yet. His breath still does stink like fermented hipogriff dung zough, and he has to fart a lot to get rid of all the gas in his stomach."

This continued on until they met all the different animals.

Sammy the runespoor, it turned out, had had his poison sacs removed painfully by his older owners. The nifflers and the crups were the ones that the group seemed to like the most. One cage, that looked like it was simply a bunch of saplings was actually an entire colony of bowtruckles that made Draco almost screech when they popped up from the soil and started running around the cage.

The two feet tall pure white kangaroo called Ricky elicited some 'aww's as well. The poor guy had been cursed with a permanent springfoot curse, and couldn't really jump without sending himself half a dozen feet into the air.

Maurice the orangutan was just that. A mostly normal orangutan, who was a bit smarter than the fellow members of the species, and had been forcefully taught sign language by his Muggle circus owners before he was rescued from there by a member of the Scamander Sanctuary. He wasn't the only non-magical animal there either. The domesticated fox, which Mr. Booplesnoot insisted on calling 'Forest corgi', was also there, chilling in his own cage.

All of the animals that were brought to the Ball were mostly harmless to humans, which was why Harry had found no problem in sticking an explosive arrowhead to each one of their cages.

Ping!

 **Quest 'Fuck up the Party as hard as you can' has progressed.**

"Zat vill be all for today efferybody," Mr. Booplesnoot finally said, "Zank you zo much for your time. I hope you vill donate to our cauze totay and spread the vord of creature conzervazion and help us zave many more."

There was a small applause, to which the man bowed, and soon after that, he and the rest of the group thanked Mr. Booplesnoot and dispersed, Harry and Draco heading back towards the drinks bar, watching Booplesnoot collect the next batch of people who wanted to get a tour.

"That was quite a bit of fun wasn't it?" Draco said, grabbing himself a glass of apfelwein.

"That it was," Harry replied, but Draco wasn't paying attention to him anymore. He had tensed and was looking unblinking at something.

Harry followed his eyes, realizing that he was looking at a black-robed man who was walking towards them. He had fully grey cropped hair, a square clean-shaven jaw, and strict looking grey eyes that made him look as if he was a member of the army. He looked oddly familiar to Harry's eyes.

Harry quickly glanced at the window floating above his head.

 **Wentworth Wright**

 **Lv-53**

"Mr. Potter," the man said, standing in front of him and extending a hand, which Harry shook, getting up to his feet, "Wright. Lord Wentworth Wright."

"A pleasure Lord Wright," Harry said, "Are you having a good evening?"

Wright looked at Draco, who was still stiffly sitting in his seat, with a severe stare before replying, "As much as one can enjoy this sad excuse of a ball that young Mr. Malfoy here insisted on having turned into a circus show."

"Do you not like animals?" Harry asked.

"I feel no kinship to them," he said, before adding, "I only came over to say welcome back to the Wizarding World Mr. Potter. I did not get to greet you the last time you were here, but I do hope you are doing well."

"Thank you, Lord Wright," Harry replied, "I am having a good time learning all about the culture and the people that I couldn't meet the first ten years of my life. It still feels a bit new, but it is my home now."

Lord Wright approvingly nodded, "As it should be. Very well then Mr. Potter. Have a good evening."

Harry nodded, and watched curiously as the man walked off into the crowd before turning to Draco, who was still tense, "This Ball theme thing was your idea? And what happened to you when he was talking? You looked petrified."

Draco completely ignored his first question as he tightly said, "That was old Lord Wentworth Anal Wright. He's a _right_ bastard is what he is."

Harry choked on his own spit, " _Anal?_ "

"Alan…I accidentally mispronounced," he flatly said.

"…No, you didn't. Why is he a right bastard?"

Draco's face turned into an ugly frown, "Hates animals, hates children, hates pretty much everything in his eyesight. He used to come over for meetings with father when I was smaller and used to hang me upside down from the chandelier if I walked into the room while they were talking. Father thought it was hilarious," he spat, before he seemed to realize that he was ranting about his childhood embarrassments to a _schoolmate_ and tried to cover ass, "I was brave, calm and stoic through the entire ordeal of course."

"Of course," Harry nodded.

"But it's a cruel thing for someone to do to a child," Draco added.

Harry patted his back and turned to use observe on the familiar looking Lord Wright, but the man had disappeared into the crowd, nowhere to be found. Scanning the crowd one last time, and not finding the man, Harry let it go and shifted his attention to the stage, where Malfoy senior had cast a _Sonorus_ on himself, and was starting to speak.

"Father's starting the new year countdown," Draco said from beside him, just as Lucius started speaking.

"Thank you to the Scamander Sanctuary and Mr. Scamander for bringing in their amazing creatures to join us today joining in today and bringing all these amazing creatures. Sadly, Mister Scamander could not join us today, but his deputy Mister Booplesnoot is here in his stead. We would like to thank him, and gift the Sanctuary with a donation of three thousand galleons in hopes that they will be able to continue their good work for as long as they can."

Lucius paused to let the crowd's applause subside.

"And finally, the House of Malfoy thanks you for your presence at this celebration on this evening. Let us count down the last few seconds of this year together."

A glowing clock appeared above the stage, and as one, the crowd started chanting.

"FIVE!"

Harry spread out tendrils of his mana to each one of the explosive arrowheads that were attached to the animals' glass cages.

"FOUR!"

He used Pyromancy to set off a small fire around each of the explosive arrowheads.

"THREE!"

A dozen tiny, pops sounded across the hall, barely audible over the crowd's chants.

"TWO!"

A million thin spidery cracks spread all across each of the dozen cages.

"ONE!"

And all hell broke loose.

* * *

Dolores Jane Umbridge was _not_ having a good day.

In the morning, the Floo Network and the Drainage systems in the Ministry had been both down for maintenance, and only one main Fireplace had been left open.

Which meant that Sanitation department had to use the same fireplace as the employees coming in to work. She had Flooed in at the wrong moment and startled the worker who had been trying to levitate a large vat of…stuff that had been clogging up the ministry drains...through the Floo to dispose, and as a result, had been completely drenched in what she had later found out was a fermented mixture of human excrement.

She had raged at the worker continuously for an hour before firing him from his job at the spot.

Much to her _extreme_ annoyance and displeasure, she learned later that day that the man brought a ticket on his way home, and had won the Annual Christmas lottery. He was now the proud owner of a retirement fund of _half a million_ galleons and luxurious home in the Bahamas.

By the time noon rolled around, she had started off to finish up her annual inspection of the departments by heading down to the only department she hadn't inspected yet.

Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

Of course, it was one of _those_ days, and nothing was to go right for her, which was why as soon as she had stepped out of the elevator, a toad, who had apparently been cursed by someone with a levitation curse, had come flailing at her and landed smack dab right on her face.

After being completely humiliated in front of the entire department, she had given them the lowest assessment she could have right on the spot and then headed right back into the elevator and back to her office.

Still, she considered herself a patient woman and had put on her best robes and done her hair and put on a perfume before head to the Malfoy Ball for the evening. The Minister needed her after all.

And it had all gone wonderfully for a while. By the time the New Year's countdown started, she and the minister had met and greeted anyone of any importance in the entire ball, including Gilderoy Lockhart, who had complimented her on her 'unique fashion sense'. It was all going swimmingly.

"Three! Two! One!" the crowd chanted in an undignified manner, she noted with an upturned nose from her spot beside the minister near one side of the dance floor.

A sudden crackling sound from her left suddenly grabbed her attention, and she turned around to see where it came from. The only thing to the left of her was a glass cage containing what looked like large kneazle.

It was only when a foul smell reached her nose that she looked down, and realized that the glass lay shattered into dust on the floor. Her eyes immediately snapped up to the kneazle, who seemed to have realized that it was free now.

Her eyes moved to the collar around its neck to check what its name was as she tried to soothe it in what she felt was a soothing voice, "There there little kitty. Don't you move a bit."

 _Fred the Nundu_

She froze.

The Nundu bared its teeth and snarled.

Fred did not, apparently, find Dolores's voice soothing.

Dolores tried to stay calm and steady as she screeched at the man frozen still beside her, " _Minister!_ Do something!"

Fred, apparently, disliked Dolores's screeches even more than it disliked her soothing voice, because as soon as he heard the screech, he sank on his haunches and sprung with tremendous speeds at her, catching her in the chest and sending her crashing to the floor.

She crashed to the ground with what looked like a massive cat on her. She tried to stay completely still, wondering why the other people around her were screaming, hoping that the creature would simply lose interest and walk away.

Fred did lose interest.

Fred did not, however, walk away.

He prowled over Dolores's body for a few more seconds, before he did some self-reflection and decided that Dolores's face was a very comfortable place to sit.

A small puff of windy gas and the sight of a month old nundu's bum were all she knew before a mind-numbing smell filled her nose and she passed out.

* * *

Cornelius Fudge, on the other hand, was having quite the fantastic day. Everything had gone smoothly for him so far, and he was simply looking forward to what promised to be a very delicious dinner with the Malfoys.

Which was why, he was quite surprised when he heard dozens of panes of glass shatter into dust, and screams start tearing through the hall. He looked at his Undersecretary to ask what happen, only to see her having a stare-off with what he remembered from that tour he'd taken to be a nundu.

Quickly realizing that he, like the other guests around him, should be getting out of here, Fudge, instead of helping his Undersecretary, decided to do exactly that and started heading straight towards the exit.

"The Bowtruckles! They're coming for our wands! Hide them!" he suddenly heard a nearby old woman behind him cry, and immediately stopped and stuffed his own wand down his shirt to make sure that the angry little creatures, infamous for stealing wooden artifacts, didn't get to it. Before he could fully finish stuffing his wand in, however, he felt something painfully sting on his leg.

But he had no time to check what it was, because, with a spike of panic, he noticed a fox with a runespoor sitting on top of its head leading a bunch of crups rampaging through the crowd, coming in his direction.

He quickly looked left and right, and suddenly caught sight of a small door.

'The washroom!' he thought, realizing that he could hide in there until help arrived. He altered course and held onto his bowler hat as he quickly jogged towards the door, dodging the fox and the crups, before he promptly let himself in and held the door shut behind him. With a relieved breath, he turned around. And froze.

Standing two feet from him, wedged inside the bathtub, was a massive orange orangutan.

Further screwing him up was another little thing that he did not know. The sting he had felt earlier was a bite from Quasimodo the magical Komodo dragon, whose venom caused the victim to feel incredibly amorous. The moment Cornelius saw the Orangutan, his heart rate sped up due to fear, and the venom finally made it to his heart, from where it was promptly sent into his brain, where it started showing its effects.

A pleasant haze fell over his mind as Cornelius spread his arms, puckered his lips, and started towards the orangutan.

Maurice the orangutan, who had simply been trying to hide from all the chaos until now, felt afraid for its virtue. He promptly gave out a loud screech and plonked Cornelius in the face before opening the door and heading out of the washroom to find a new place to hide from all the chaos.

Cornelius was found four hours later in that same bathroom by a plumber named Salmoni.

* * *

Harry looked around at the sheer chaos that was the Ballroom right now, wondering why so few of the guests were trying to control the animals. Maybe they were scared of the Bowtruckles, who were now scuttling over almost every surface in the room? Or maybe they were scared of the baby nundu? They couldn't be scared of the crups or the little kangaroo that was flying around the room, could they?

Oh well, he thought, Regardless of the guests' reactions, this was a success. With the exception of Lucius, Mister Booplesnoot, and a couple of other sanctuary workers who were trying to summon the animals into some Transfigured cages, no one else was trying to do anything other than just escape the place. This was definitely a successful prank, and would more than affect Malfoy Sr.'s reputation adversely. He did remember to drop a couple of thousand galleons from his inventory into the donation box, just to make sure that the sanctuary didn't suffer for this.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Fuck up the Party as hard as you can!**

 **Reward,**

 **50,000 Exp**

 **5 stat points**

 **New Perk!**

Ping!

 **You have gained a new perk!**

 **Amateur Prankster- With the genes of James Potter, you have a natural skill for the mischievous and the devious. This perk grants you a permanent +5 level boost to Sneaking, Blackmailing, Lying, Theatrics, and Bullshitting, and a further +5 level boost when out pranking.**

'Nice!' Harry thought with a grin as he let the flow of the guests around him direct him towards the room where the floo fireplace was there. Wading through the crowd, Harry found Lockhart almost near the front of the impromptu line near the Floo.

"Not quite the night we expected eh Harry?" Lockhart said with a garish grin, "Although I did get to tell the minister the tale of the infamous Tyrannosaurus Deer I had fought in Australia, so the night wasn't a complete failure."

Harry made himself simply stay quiet and not snap off a comeback, forcing himself to remember that he was trying to make this walking talking infomercial of a man look good. If he wanted to call a kangaroo a Tyrannosaurus Deer, then he was free to do so.

Soon afterward, they Flooed back to Hogwarts, leaving the party behind them in a complete mess.

* * *

Throughout the next few days, Harry learned that Lucius Malfoy was very good at covering fuck ups. Nothing about the party had made to any of the newspapers, and no one was actually talking about it except the occasional Slytherin in the halls. But Harry was far from disheartened. Most of the powerful politicians in the country had been in that room, and even if the public didn't know about what happened in there, those politicians did, and that almost definitely meant that Lucius's reputation with most of them would have fallen a lot.

The morning of January a few days later found Harry, Dean and Professor Vector in the Project Room, working on a magical contraption that could identify animals.

It had all started when Dean had pulled out a Self Spelling quill and started using it for his homework. It had then occurred to Harry that the Quill must need to check the spellings of the words somewhere to correct them.

'Observe' he had cast on the quill, and had found what he had needed.

 **Self Spelling Quill**

 **It is a type of quill which corrects the writer's spelling automatically. It does so by using a Protean Charm to link the quill to a Source dictionary and a Quarean Charm to scan for the word in question.**

After explaining to Dean and Hermione how this could prove to be the key to building something to identify a creature and looking through a bunch of books in the library looking for the two charms, it had been Dean who had found what it was in a book in the Sixth Year reference section.

The Quarean and Protean charms, also called the Looking and Linking charms, were sixth year charms well beyond the capability and understanding of any second year student, even Harry.

Thankfully, they had one full-grown Arithmancy teacher at their disposal who _did_ know how to cast the charms.

"Careful," Harry whispered to Professor Vector as she used a sharp knife to carve the rune _Ehwaz_ , the rune for Partnership onto the thick metal wristband that lay on the table. Dean shushed him with a finger, keeping his own eyes stuck on the bracelet.

"The list," the Professor sharply said, and Dean quickly handed over the notebook which contained the entire compiled list of all the magical creatures that they could find any information upon. They had been working on it for three months now, and it was finally paying off.

The Professor quickly and with a deft hand carved _Ehwaz_ 's partner rune _Wazhe_ on the spine of the notebook.

It was important, the Professor had told them, that there be some sort of runes to help keep the spells permanently going, and keep the list and the band permanently linked.

With the runes carved and ready to go, the Professor pulled her wand out and pointed it at the list.

" _Proteus,_ " she incanted, tapping the notebook once. Her wand tip started glowing with a vibrant green light. With the glowing tip, she tapped the metal band. Both the objects were infused with a glowing green light, which subsided in a few seconds, after which she repeated the spellcasting process for _Quareus_ , enchanting the golden bracelet with the Looking charm.

"Hedwig!" Harry called, and Hedwig fluttered down from her perch onto the desk they were working on, brought her head close to the metal band, and dropped a single tear onto the rune, before doing the same for the rune on the notebook.

The runes flashed once and then started glowing a very dim blue. A gentle, almost inaudible hum started emanating from the band, showing that the charms were active.

And it was done.

The first _actual_ result that had come out of this project of theirs, was done.

The Professor took a step back, watching the two unmoving boys with a small smile, clearly happy for them.

Meanwhile, Harry didn't know whether he wanted to touch it or not, held back by an almost infantile fear that it would perhaps break the moment he touch it. Instead, he used an Observe on it.

 **The Identifier Band**

 **A magical device capable of identifying any magical creature whose existence has been recorded in its Source Book. Just put on the Band and point your index finger at the creature, say 'Identify' and the name of the creature will carve itself on the band.**

"Go on. Test it," Professor Vector said with a grin.

Dean looked at Harry, who nodded at him before he picked the Identifier up gingerly and slipped it onto his arm. It immediately resized itself to fit Dean's wrist, who shot Harry a grin. Poor Hermione had spent all of last night working on the Resizing spell and putting it onto the band and was now passed out in her dorms, tired out of her mind.

Harry looked over Dean's shoulder to get a better look at the band as he pointed his index finger at Hedwig, who was sitting on the desk, his hands shivering with anticipation. As clearly as he could, he said, "Identify"

The Identifier gave a small shudder, and before their eyes, the word ' _Phoenix_ ' carved itself onto the metal band.

Ping!

 **A skill has levelled up twice due to a successful planning of an enchantment!**

 **Enchanting, Lv-3 (65%)**

 **You can use this skill to imbue magical properties to a non-magical object by layering spells and runes together. The process can make the spells last much longer than normal. High enough level in this can even make the spells permanent.**

 **40% chance of success**

Dean grabbed Harry in a hug, who patted his back, "We did it Dean! The first step of success in all this."

"If this takes off, we'll be toasty by the time we get out of school," Dean said with a chuckle, letting go of Harry and taking off the band from his wrist.

"Free NEWTs here we come," Harry joked with a grin, taking the Identifier from Dean and subtly dropping it into his inventory from inside his pocket before doing the same for the Source notebook.

The Professor let them joke around for another couple of minutes before butting in, "Yes, yes, good job you two. You can celebrate later when Miss Granger is back up. Now do tidy up the room. I have to escort you to the grounds to watch Professor Lockhart's…Stunt. Mandatory stuff I'm afraid."

Two simultaneous groans echoed across the room.

When the two boys reached the grounds, they were surprised to find quite the crowd under the highest tower.

Giant canopies had been set up in a U around the safety net with dozens of chairs and roofs made of transparent screen so that they could see the fall clearly. Students from all the years who had stayed for the holidays, Hogsmeade citizens, and what looked like a bunch of photographers spread all around the place, getting every angle possible. If one squinted, one could see Lockhart standing on top of the tower. The giant golden net stood beneath him, looking as unbreakable as ever before. Just to be safe, Harry quickly cast an observe on it.

 **Enchanted Industrial Grade Breaking Safety Net**

 **A very powerful enchanted safety net capable of protecting people from any injury after falling from great heights by limiting the distance they fall, and deflecting to dissipate the impact energy. Charmed to be Unbreakable, this net can catch a falling overweight troll from a height over 700 meters without any harm to the subject at all.**

Lockhart would be alright, Harry thought as he took a seat underneath one of the canopies beside Dean, tuning out the random announcements and the overly saccharine sweet-talking that the anchor was doing to warm up the crowd. All he had to do now, was wait and watch.

"And now!" the portly announcer standing in front of the net shouted into his megaphone, "For the moment you have all been waiting for! The-"

The megaphone suddenly stopped with a large static screech.

Murmurs swept through the crowd as Professor McGonagall came half marching, half running across the grounds to the announcer, and started arguing with him. Harry only caught bare snippets of the announcer's side of the argument, "Shut this down…months of preparation…over in a few minutes…not stopping…Fine…Only two."

The megaphone switched on with another screech of static, before the announcer said, "We will be starting the event shortly. Meanwhile, Mister Potter and Mister Thomas! Professor Mcgonagall is asking for you. I repeat. Potter and Thomas!"

Harry looked at Dean with wide eyes, feeling almost a stone drop in his stomach, wondering what had happened. They got to their feet and promptly made their way over to the acting Headmistress, who simply said, "Come with me now you two," before giving the announcer a glare and walking off with the two boys in tow.

"Professor," Harry hesitantly asked as they made their way into the school and up the marble staircase, "What happened?"

"This will be a bit of a shock," said Professor McGonagall in a surprisingly gentle voice, just as Harry noticed with a spike of horror that they were approaching the Infirmary, "There has been another attack."

Harry's insides did a horrible turn. Professor McGonagall pushed the door open and he and Dean entered.

Madam Pomfrey was bending over a girl that lay on the bed utterly still, her eyes open and glassy. A girl with long, bushy hair.

'Hermione' the name of the girl came to him, yet for an infantile moment, his mind rejected that answer. For how could it be Hermione when she had been just fine this morning? A bit tired, but just fine and happy as usual.

"Oh no…" he heard Dean mutter in shock, and knew at that moment that he wasn't ready to handle the shock all by himself. He quickly used Gamer's Mind to push back his emotions, before turning to McGonagall and asking, "How did this happen?"

"She was found near the library ten minutes ago," said Professor McGonagall gently, "You can have some time with her. I have to go see that…Professor Lockhart's event finishes up quick, and the students head back to the tower immediately."

Madam Pomfrey soon finished making Hermione comfortable, before she let the two of them pull over a pair of chairs and sit down next to her. "If it's any consolation, the Mandrakes will be ready in a month at most, and she will be up and moving soon enough."

It was some consolation. But not much.

For the longer part of an hour, they just sat there, doing absolutely nothing. Harry used an Observe on her.

 **Hermione Granger (Status: Petrifaction)**

 **(Relationship Meter-54%)**

 **Lv-8**

 **HP-400/400**

 **MP-350/350**

 **Race-Witch**

 **Str-4**

 **Vit-6**

 **Dex-5**

 **Int-15**

 **Wis-6**

 **Luc-3**

 **Hermione Jean Granger is a Muggle-born witch and the daughter of two dentists in London. She grew up as a normal girl until, at age eleven, she learned that she was a witch and had been accepted into Hogwarts. She possesses a brilliant academic mind, and is a gifted student. She is very studious and bookish and can be very bossy and obnoxious.**

 **She does not have any thoughts right now.**

Harry tried his Healing and Healing Touch ability on her, despite knowing that he would almost definitely fail.

Nothing.

"I wonder if she did see the attacker, though?" said Dean, looking sadly at Hermione's rigid face. "Because if he sneaked up on them all, no one will ever know…"

Before Harry could reply, footsteps rang from outside the Hospital wing. They turned to see Professor McGonagall walk in, somehow looking even more distressed and shaken than she had been when she had left them. "Mr. Thomas. Mr. Potter. I will escort you back to your respective towers," she said heavily.

"Did the stunt go alright Professor? Is Professor Lockhart fine? Is everything alright?" Dean asked.

Her face wilted, "Unfortunately not Mr. Thomas. It failed. Professor Lockhart was able to float down for a few moments, before he plummeted down."

"But the net caught him right? He's safe?" Harry asked, his stomach dropping. McGonagall's tone did _not_ bode well.

"The net's enchantement had failed," she grimly said, "and it didn't slow him down as much as it needed to. Professor Lockhart suffered from serious bone injuries and internal injuries, and is in a serious condition right now. He was just portkeyed him over to St Mungo's Hospital to start his treatment and hopefully, will soon recover."

Ping!

 **Quest Failure!**

 **Keep Lockhart alive and awesome-looking until the end of January!**

 **Failure,**

 **Possible death amongst the Hogwarts students!**

'Oh no. Oh no no,' Harry thought as he read through the window and paled. 'This was bad. This was very bad. How could this have even happened?! He had made _sure_ that the net was enchanted.'

"Take a couple of more minutes with Miss Granger," McGonagall said, unaware of Harry's internal turmoil, "I need to talk to Madam Pomfrey before we head back."

As Dean watched McGonagall head off deeper into the Hospital wing, Harry rested his head in his palms, his mind running through the hundred worst-case scenarios that this could lead to. Suddenly, something caught his sight through the corner of his eye.

Hermione's right hand.

It lay clenched on top of her blankets, and bending closer, he saw that a piece of paper was scrunched inside her fist. Checking to make sure that Dean wasn't looking, Harry quickly used his strength to pry open her vice grip on the paper, only managing to tell that it was some sort of newspaper cut-out before he subtly dropped it into his inventory. Dean, who was still trying to catch sight of whatever McGonagall was talking about with Madam Pomfrey, saw none of it, and Harry decided that he'd tell him the next day.

Professor McGonagall returned moments later, and escorted them back to their respective towers.

* * *

That night, feeling slightly sickened from all the mindless gossip and discussion that had pervaded all throughout the tower, Harry had shut himself up in his bedcurtains after making sure that all his dorm mates were asleep and pulled out the piece of paper that he had found in Hermione's hand to peruse.

It was a news article, dated 19 June 1943. Harry was pretty sure that this particular cut-out was from the library archives newspapers, which made it all the more shocking that Hermione was willing to tear one off. The paper was fully riddled with underlines and notes in Hermione's handwriting. Harry started reading it.

 _HOGWARTS MURDERER CAUGHT_

 _The notorious culprit behind the Hogwarts petrifactions ( **last time opening** ) and the murder of Myrtle Warren ( **Moaning Myrtle?** ) has finally been caught red handed, the Ministry of Magic confirmed today, writes Special Correspondent Mira Thakur._

 _Since both the culprit and his capturer are both underage, the officials have refused to reveal their names and have provided us with only the following statement, "The culprit has been expulsed ( **check expulsion list of 1943?** ) from the school and will definitely be held responsible for his actions."_

 _What caused those petrifactions in the first place, was not something that was clear. However, various anonymous sources in the school witnessed a massive spider escaping the castle on the day of the culprit's capture, which has led to few speculations about some venomous variations of giant spiders ( **Acromantula? Marshweaver?** ) being the cause in question. These are, however, simple speculation, and should not be taken as fact._

 _Due to the valiant efforts of Potions Master Barnabus Belby, the petrified students will soon be able to reawaken from their months long slumber. We here at the Daily Prophet wish them and Hogwarts school the very best for their recovery._

And underneath the article, in an almost unreadable shaky script, was the final note that Hermione had made.

 _( **Large spider the Beast of Slytherin? Heir can control spiders?…Imperius?…Harry?** )_

And suddenly, with a sharp stab of hurt, Harry remembered the time he had told her that he could get spiders to listen to him, and immediately realized what all these notes meant.

Hermione had believed, or at least suspected in part, that _he_ was the Heir of Slytherin.

It was a logical conclusion that she had come to, Harry told himself, by following some very clear evidence. She had even considered other possible options, like the Imperius Curse. But he couldn't stop the hurt that seemed to worm itself into his heart.

Harry dropped the piece of paper into his Inventory, and parted his curtains to step out into the quiet sleeping dorm.

He made his way over the window and sat down on the sill, looking out over the grounds of Hogwarts and trying not to think of anything. An hour and a half he sat there, looking at the moon slowly make its way across the sky, before a commotion in the grounds suddenly grabbed his attention.

Harry squinted to see what was going on, but couldn't really make out anything other than a few figures heading out of Hagrid's hut.

A small black figure was springing around the figures, barking up a storm. That told him that it was Fang the boarhound…whose loud barks had grabbed his attention in the first place.

Frowning, Harry quickly ran over to his trunk, out of which he pulled out his Astronomy telescope. He carried over the telescope and placed it on the sill before looking through it to see what was going on.

It was Hagrid, bound in shackles, being taken away by three men in Auror uniforms. A distressed-looking Professor McGonagall and Minister Cornelius Fudge followed them close by.

* * *

 **The pieces are set. The finale is setting in, and expect it to end VERY differently than canon. Next chapter will be different. There'll be less Gamer stuff, and we will see Tom's perspective on how he pulled off the entire incident in the latter part of the chapter. Leave a review about what you thought.**


	33. Book-II:Webs of Deception

Chapter 13:

While Harry and Dean were working on the Identifier Band, hundreds of feet below them in the deep dark belly of the Chamber of Secrets, a red-eyed girl calmly circled the unconscious body of one Argus Filch.

It had been a whole week since he had taken full possession of his host since the last time he had done so had almost proven too taxing on him. He really should have expected that though. _Of course_ using the Imperius had proven to be more taxing, especially since it required the use of an organized mind, and his young host was quite lacking in that.

But the information that the Imperiused Professor Pomona Sprout had given him had proven to be more than worth it.

He had learned from her that contrary to popular belief, his Prime soul piece had not perished after all. It had been at this very school the last year.

He had also learned that the Headmaster believed that his Prime had fled to the forests of Albania, and had told Sprout that he would be going to look for him there after his suspension.

Foolish of the old fool really, to trust people with such weak minds.

But then again, Voldemort's memories _had_ shown him that trusting untrustworthy people was the biggest weakness that Albus Dumbledore had.

So now, after he had finally regained enough strength to take over his host's body again, he had devised a plan to help his Prime out a little bit.

Pulling his wand out, he cast, " _Sectumsempra,_ " slicing open the squib's chest. With a few more waves, he stopped the blood and vanished some muscle, leaving behind a small cavity in the caretaker's body.

He dipped a hand into a robe pocket, pulling out a silver Diadem with an oval sapphire encrusted into it, which he gently placed on his host's head.

Steeling himself, he sent a small tendril of his magic to connect to the much more diminished piece of soul in the diadem. With a small flutter, consciousness in the ancient headpiece rose, and sensing a larger, more active portion of its soul nearby, waited for its command.

'Lead the squib to the Prime. Assist him in regaining his power,' he instructed, sending all the information he had on the Prime into the diadem.

The soul inside shuddered in obedience.

Pulling the diadem off of his head, he used his wand to cast a powerful dark compulsion charm on Filch before tying it to the Diadem, making sure that the squib would do everything the Diadem wanted it to without it needing to possess him.

Finally, he placed the diadem into the cavity that he had carved into the squib's chest and with a wave of his wand, fully healed it over, hiding the horcrux completely inside his body. Another few waves, and the man's torn clothes fixed themselves.

Filch's eyes snapped open, and he wordlessly rose to his feet before standing still, waiting for his command.

"Go," he said.

With a nod, Filch turned around and headed towards the side wall of the chamber. A circular passageway opened up in the stone wall, which Tom knew would lead out into the edge of the Forbidden Forest, from where the squib would be able to steal one of the school's thestrals for transportation.

Of course, he idly thought, he could go find the Prime himself after he himself gained a body, or maybe he could even send someone stronger than a squib, but in his less than humble opinion, if his Prime had grown so weak that he couldn't make do with the squib and one of its Horcruxes, then perhaps it didn't deserve to be the Prime any more.

Besides, squibs were easier to control, wouldn't be able to fight against a full possession, and no one at Hogwarts would really notice that he was missing until it was too late, so it wasn't all bad at all.

The stone wall closed behind the man's back, and he turned and headed towards the corner where the Draught of Restoration had been bubbling away silently.

It was almost completely done now and needed barely a day's of work to finish up. But for now, he needed to get to the library so nobody noticed his host missing. The next big step of his plan was only hours away, and until then, it was a waiting game.

Giving the potion a few stirs and adding the last batch of unicorn blood to it, he covered it with a lid, opened up a passage that led up to the third floor and headed into it, ducking to avoid the low entrance.

He exited behind a tapestry near the library corridor. Walking briskly into the library, he made his way over to a desk near the back, where he sat down before withdrawing his consciousness from his host's mind, leaving only a small tendril of magic connected to make sure that he could see and hear everything happening around her through her senses.

His host woke up a few seconds later, feeling groggy.

Her mind was full of confusion, he noted, before he quickly sent a small tendril and quashed the confusion down, leaving her with a sense of serene acceptance. She quietly walked over to a bookshelf, picked out a book and started reading it.

* * *

The next hour and a half saw nothing else happen since the library was mostly empty except for Madam Irma Pince.

Just as he was about to withdraw the tendril of consciousness he had left connected to his host, however, something interesting happened.

Hermione Granger walked into the library before heading straight into newspaper archives, looking entirely too shifty for herself. If there was any place in the school that the little mudblood _wouldn't_ be acting shifty, it would be the library. Curiosity aroused, he gave a twist and a pull, and his own consciousness snapped right out of the diary and settled into Lisa's head.

Pushing himself up from the desk, he walked around the Charms shelf and quietly entered the archives section, trying to stay unseen. Granger was sitting cross-legged beside a box of old newspapers, ruffling through it, quietly, looking for something.

It didn't take much to guess what.

Making sure that he hadn't been seen, he quickly slipped out of the archives and out of the library, before making his way to the nearby girl's bathroom where he shut himself up in one of the stalls.

The basilisk usually stayed in the pipes, since the winter wasn't really comfortable for it. The echoing nature of the pipes made sending messages to the giant serpent quite easy for him.

Making sure that no one else was in the bathroom with a quick spell, he lifted the lid of the toilet, cast _Sonorus_ on his voice, and keeping his face at the seat's height, hissed into it, " _Outside the library. The girl with bushy hair. Petrify. Don't kill._ "

It wouldn't be good to have an obvious mystery killing when his plan was so close to its end, he thought as he headed back out of the bathroom and into the library. He had to stick to a petrifaction for now.

All that he had left to do now was to make sure that Granger went outside in time for her petrifaction.

He made his way into the archives section; gladly noting along the way that Pince had already left for Lockhart's event; where Granger was sitting on the floor still looking through newspapers.

He swiftly planned out the entire conversation in his head, disguised his eyes with a wave of his hand before he put a curious expression on to Lisa's face and drew Granger's attention with a cough.

Startled, the bushy-haired Ravenclaw quickly turned around, her eyes widening at the sight of her housemate, "Lisa-"

Not giving the girl any chances, he asked, "You're looking for articles about the last time the chamber was opened aren't you?"

Granger's eyes widened, and then she hesitated, before finally nodding.

He walked over to her, and sunk down to his knees beside the girl, slightly impressed to see that the girl was actually looking in the right year's newspapers, "Have you found anything?"

The bushy haired girl's expression grew miserable as she shook her head, "I've been sneaking away to try and find something for the longest while now. I've gone through as many papers as I could. Nothing."

"Do your friends know about it?"

She shook her head again. "I've been telling them that I'm tired and sick so that I can come look for something in the library by myself. I don't want to pull them into this and put their lives at risk. Especially not Harry. He hasn't been doing good recently, what with Terry being gone," she said before looking at him fearfully, "You won't tell him will you?"

"I won't," he promised her, "In fact, I think I can help."

Granger looked at him curiously, "You can?"

He nodded, before pulling out a regular marble from his host's pocket. "This is a Searchible. My mum gave me a bunch of these for my birthday. If you point your wand at it and say the word you are looking for, it will find the nearest piece of paper with that word written on it."

Granger looked doubtfully at the marble, "Really? I don't think I've ever heard of anything called Searchibles."

"Watch," he simply said in reply, before pointing his wand at the marble, and saying, "Petrifactions"

As Granger watched with wide eyes, the marble cracked into two in her hands, and one of the newspapers on the floor lit up with an orange light.

"Go on," he told her, and Granger looked at his host's calm face doubtfully before cracking open the newspaper and sifting through it.

"Oh!" she exclaimed loudly, before realizing that she was in the library and quieting down. He looked over her shoulder, and looked at the article she had found.

' _HOGWARTS MURDERER CAUGHT_ ' the headline read. Simple enough article with little actual information. Nothing to fret about, he thought as he turned to look at Granger, who had gone bone white.

"Those marbles only have a single use, but I have loads more back in the dorms," he said, making his host sound as earnest as he could, "I could get the rest from the dorm right now and we could just look for as many of these articles as possible. Who knows, maybe we could find something interesting."

Granger looked at her as if she couldn't believe her fortune. She gratefully smiled at him before saying, "I'll come with you Lisa. Most people are down at the grounds for Professor Lockhart's event, and its not safe to go all the way to the tower alone. Would you please wait for me near the doors for a second. I'll put these newspapers away and we can head up together from there."

So the girl had a little Gryffindor in her, he amusedly thought before nodding and heading out of the archives section.

He walked out of the library, not bothering to wait as he stepped around the giant Basilisk sitting right outside the door that only he could see and headed down the corridor towards the stairs which would lead him to Lockhart's event.

A small thud behind him indicated to him that the Basilisk's job was done.

He grinned. He could have just cast an Imperius on the girl and _made_ her come outside, but mudbloods were so gullible and fun to play with. A couple of small charms and a glowing charm on the paper, and the girl instantly believed everything that he said.

'Searchibles indeed,' he thought with a chuckle, 'Hilarious really.'

* * *

Gilderoy Lockhart was a wizard who was hailed by many as the greatest wizard since Albus Dumbledore, with exploits far more widespread and varied than the Headmaster's. He had felt the man's magic a couple of times through his host's senses and it had been enough to make his host light-headed, which spoke volumes of the man's raw ability.

Of course, there were people who believed that he was a fraud, and maybe he was. He was a man more incompetent a teacher than any he had ever seen before.

But he wasn't feeling up to taking any risks. If there was even a one percent chance that the man could, in any unpredictable or unexpected way, prove to be a hurdle to his plans, then it was better to take it as absolute certainty and simply remove him from the equation.

Besides, this ridiculously over-publicised attempt at jumping off of a tower and proving that he had somehow discovered the key to broom-less flight was almost too convenient to pass off on.

He had barely made his way to a seat under the giant canopy that had been set up under the highest tower when suddenly, the announcer's megaphone suddenly stopped with a large static screech. Murmurs swept through the crowd as Professor McGonagall came half marching, half running across the grounds to the announcer, and started arguing with him.

The megaphone switched on a minute later with another screech of static, before the announcer said, "We will be starting the event shortly. Meanwhile, Mister Potter and Mister Thomas! Professor McGonagall is asking for you. I repeat. Potter and Thomas!"

He watched amusedly as the two boys waded through the crowd and followed the acting Headmistress as she jogged off into the castle. They must have discovered Granger.

He pushed the thought out of his mind as he cast a Supersensory charm on his host's eyes before looking up at the tower, on top which he could now clearly see what the Defence Professor was doing.

He smirked at the sight.

The man had used some rope to tie two children's brooms to his arms, and was now putting on his plum robes. Apparently, he was going to use the broom's child-safety feature of simply floating down into the ground to create an illusion of a controlled fall.

"And now!" the announcer yelled, "The moment you have been waiting for. Ladies and gentlemen! Give it up for the legendary Gilderoooooooooy Lockhart!"

And with that, the Defence professor above the tower stepped off the precipice. A ripple of shock spread through the crowd as the man started slowly floating down instead of the madly plummeting to his death, before the cheers started.

It was time.

His eyes flickered to the enchanted safety net underneath the tower, before he quickly sent out a substantial tendril of magic and shattered the Unbreakable charm on it. He quickly looked back up at Lockhart before muttering a short jinx under his breath.

The brooms, and Lockhart's arms tied to it, gave a mighty lurch before the enchantments on the brooms completely broke and the man plummeted with a loud yell, going faster and faster as screams of horror rose in volume in the crowd. He tore right through the net, barely slowing down as he slammed straight into the solid ground with a loud crunch.

The mediwizards and mediwitches nearby rushed in to help the man, and the teachers started herding the students back into the castle. He let his host get carried by the flow of the crowd. This would be more than enough of a distraction to make sure nobody noticed anything until it was too late.

But for now, it was time to rest and recuperate his strength. The next day was going be much more taxing than this one.

* * *

The next day, Harry skipped breakfast to head up to visit Hermione, only to learn that Madam Pomfrey had barred visitors completely from entering the hospital wing.

"We're taking no more chances," Madam Pomfrey told him severely through a crack in the infirmary door. "No Potter, I'm sorry. There's every chance that the attacker might come back to finish these people off."

With that sort of start to the morning, the rest of the day wasn't exactly looking up. By the time noon rolled around, he learned that Dean had shut himself up in the Gryffindor tower, feeling quite under the weather. The rest of the school, forced to stick together in groups of two and three were full of gossips and rumours.

"The Minister wouldn't have taken Hagrid to Azkaban if he hadn't been a hundred percent sure that he was guilty," said a third year Hufflepuff to his mates as Harry passed him by and Harry held himself from correcting them. He had a gut feeling that the half giant could never have been the killer, but he couldn't really say that for sure. And with the current paranoia in the school, saying anything even remotely supportive of someone who was apparently convicted of opening the Chamber would have been a stupid thing to do.

So he headed over to the Project room, where he shut himself up, spread the newspaper article Hermione had found open on one of the worktables, and pointedly trying to ignore the last line about her suspecting him, started looking through it, scanning for clues.

By and in itself, he noted, the article was almost completely useless.

But with Hermione's notes, it started to reveal information that he wouldn't have noticed by himself immediately. Information like that female ghost Moaning Myrtle being the same girl that had been killed all those years ago. And some sort of spider being associated with the opening of the chamber back then.

However, he almost immediately dismissed her theory about a spider being the Beast.

Dumbledore had been more than sure when he had told him that the creature was serpentine, and he was willing to take the headmaster's word for it. In fact, if the ministry believed that the killer was Hagrid and the beast was a spider, then the impossibility of the spider being the beast also made Hagrid being the heir highly improbable.

Something had happened here at Hogwarts all those years ago. Something that he didn't know about. And there was only one person who he could get answers from.

Myrtle Warren.

He needed to find the ghost, find out what had happened all those years ago, find out what she remembered about her death, track down where the Chamber of Secrets was and then stopping the heir before he went on a massive killing spree or something similarly horrible.

The heir was protected by his shield of anonymity. If Harry could somehow break that shield down and find the person behind all this, then taking him down ought to become much easier.

Of course, there was still the giant ass problem of no one being able to see or hear the beast itself, but he'd just have to pray that his unique set of skills would somehow end up covering his bottom in that pickle of a situation.

Ping!

 **Due to the successful crafting of a Plan of Action in distress, take +1 Wis!**

Waving that stat screen away, Harry quickly folded up the paper and dropped it into his inventory, before he headed out of the room, his destination the second floor girl's bathroom, Moaning Myrtle's haunt.

* * *

Meanwhile, on the other side of the school inside the Ravenclaw tower, a red eyed girl was placing a plain looking diary inside a rune circle carved into the floor of the otherwise empty girls' dorms.

Throughout the months in which he had been brewing the Draught of Restoration, had found one particular decision to be very troublesome to make.

Whether or not he would leave his host alive.

His host, as he had often thought, would make for a loyal follower, and at least in the first few days after his revival when he would be weak, a loyal follower to have his back would be invaluable. But leaving her alive would also bring its share problems, including the fact that she could simply take his diary and reveal the secret to his immortality to someone untrustworthy while he was weak right after the ritual.

A problem indeed, but not an unsolvable one.

" _Mi aggata mujhesusu lagra nu sanguini le kasa_ " he chanted in a monotone.

The rune circle around the diary lit up with a sickly orange light, and a loud scream filled the dorms. Whether it was coming from the diary or his own host's mouth he did not know, but what he did know that the ritual was working as intended, separating the entirity of his soul from the diary and pulling it into his current host's body.

A dark pulsating cloud of smoke that he knew to be his soul rose from the diary and converged into a sphere above the now former horcrux, before it immediately sensed where its consciousness was flew into his kneeling host's body with a whoosh.

A final scream of pain escaped his host's mouth as she fell to the floor, her body shuddering uncontrollably as it tried to accommodate his _entire_ soul.

It was a while before he pushed himself up from the floor and onto his feet.

He had about eight more hours until his host's mind and body would become permanently damaged from the strain of holding his soul, but until then, he was in complete control of Lisa Turpin's mind, magic and body.

It was time to decide what his future loyal follower would and would not know.

He closed her eyes, and dipped into her mind, dissolving the innermost shields he had crafted to hide a bunch of memories from Lisa herself. With all those memories out in the open, he started grouping together the memories that he wanted no one to know, i.e. the memories from Lord Voldemort and everything about the horcrux.

He considered erasing the memories of their more...intimate interactions, but decided to let them be. It was important for her to remember just how much power he had over her. He had needed them hidden while she was in school, but now, with her primed to be his most loyal follower, he wanted her to remember every bit of those memories with _vivid_ clarity.

With a crushing swipe of his mental presence, he completely destroyed the memories he wanted gone, leaving their only recollection as a part of his own soul.

Then, on the way out of her mind, he crafted the strongest set of shields that he could craft, making her mind nigh impenetrable by anyone except him and him only, making sure that it would take care of anyone ever trying to get into his host's thoughts and stealing his secrets.

The girl opened her eyes, now no more a mere host, but a horcrux herself.

She eyed the diary that was nothing more than a plain notebook now, before grabbing her wand and systematically dismantling every bit of dark magic protection on it. With a final wave of her wand, the diary's cover smoothed over and the name embossed in it completely disappeared, leaving the diary in the exact same condition that it had been purchased half a century ago.

Empty.

She burnt the diary into ashes with a flick of her wand and headed out of the dorms herself. Dusk was starting to fall, and it was time for the beginning of the end.

* * *

It took Harry a few minutes to find the girls' bathroom that Moaning Myrtle was known to haunt, which, he noted curiously, was mere meters away from the spot where Mrs. Norris had been found petrified.

Wondering if this was some coincidence or perhaps related, he gingerly stepped over the OUT OF ORDER sign, opened the door and stepped into the bathroom.

It was the most depressing bathroom Harry had ever set foot in. Under a large, cracked, and spotted mirror were a row of chipped sinks. The floor was damp and reflected the dull light given off by the stubs of a few candles, burning low in their holders. The wooden doors to the stalls were flaking and scratched and one of them was dangling off its hinges.

A sobbing sound echoed through the bathroom, and Harry followed it over towards the end stall. When he reached it, he quietly used Observe on the dangling ghostly feet that were clearly visible from under the stall's door.

 **Myrtle Warren**

 **(Relationship Meter-20%)**

 **Lv-0**

 **HP-0/0**

 **MP-0/0**

 **Race-Ghost Witch**

 **Str-0**

 **Vit-0**

 **Dex-0**

 **Int-0**

 **Wis-0**

 **Luc-0**

 **Myrtle Elizabeth Warren, more commonly known after her death as Moaning Myrtle, is a ghost who haunts the girls' bathroom at Hogwarts. She died in 1943 due to ?**

 **She is sad about being dead right now. She doesn't know Harry, but has heard good things about him.**

Harry read the question marks in the observe with a spike of frustration. The Fidelius was even affecting the game, and that was _more_ than cause for worry. He waved the screen away, having made sure that he wasn't disturbing the wrong ghost, before he slowly opened the door to the stall.

"Hello, Myrtle, how are you?" he gingerly said to the ghost of the young girl who was floating above the tank of the toilet, picking a spot on her chin.

"This is a girls' bathroom," she said, eyeing Harry suspiciously. "You're not a girl."

"No," Harry agreed, trying not to set off the famously weepy girl's tears, "I just wanted to ask you abut how you died,"

Contrary to what Harry expected, Myrtle's whole aspect changed at once. She looked as though she had never been asked such a flattering question.

"Ooooh, it was so horrible," she said happily, "I remember it clearly. It happened-"

Much to Harry's shock, she stopped talking mid-sentence and her face suddenly blanked.

Harry snapped his fingers in front of her, but she did not respond. It was as if she had gone catatonic.

She maintained the same blank look for a full half minute, and just as Harry was starting to wonder if he should call somebody, she suddenly regained her bright expression and said, "And that's how I died."

Harry's eyes widened as he realised what had just happened.

The Fidelius.

But he was far from being discouraged. The fact that Myrtle couldn't remember how she died could only mean one thing. That it had been the Beast of Slytherin that had killed her. The Fidelius only hid things that had anything to do with the chamber. It was just like Dumbledore said. He had to follow the blanks, and soon he would find the truth. Uncovering the mystery of how Myrtle died was how he could find the Chamber of Secrets!

Thus emboldened, Harry asked Myrtle another question.

"After you died and became a ghost, did you hear anything about a large spider in the school? It said in the newspapers that a large spider killed you. Do you remember anything at all about that?"

Myrtle frowned in concentration, before replying, "I don't think I remember anything about a spider, but I do remember Professor Slughorn saying that a colony of Acromantula had appeared in the forbidden forest a few years after I died. I remember hearing him and being very scared. I'm not very fond of spiders you see."

Yes…It was all starting to make sense in his mind.

If Hagrid had been the one who had been raising the giant spider, and if the ministry believed that it was the Beast, then Hagrid would have been convicted of being the killer. The Acromantula itself had escaped to settle down in the Forbidden Forest, and meanwhile, the real killer had gotten away with it.

Acromantula could talk, Harry remembered, and if the one that was suspected of being the Beast was still alive in the forest, then it could help fill in a lot of blanks that Harry still had in Harry's story.

An unrelated seeming piece of information suddenly popped up into his mind, and Harry almost pushed it away before he saw what Gamer's mind skill had found and froze.

Dobby…

That night in the hospital wing, when Dobby had told him that he had felt some of his memories being wiped clean, he had been talking about the Fidelius!

Whereas most humans had been entirely unable to even notice that their minds had been altered, Dobby, despite not being the brightest bulb, had noticed that something off.

Was it something related to his not being fully human? Was that the reason? House elves were created from the human species, so the Fidelius had affected Dobby, but they weren't _all_ human, which could have been why he had noticed that something was off.

So by that logic, would that mean that something that was entirely non-human…something like an acromantula…would it be entirely unaffected by the charm?

Had he stumbled upon a hole in the Fidelius?

"Do you think the acromantula colony is still there in the forest?" Harry asked urgently.

Myrtle shuddered, blurring her form a bit, before answering, "I don't see why they wouldn't be."

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Find the acromantula colony and talk to them**

 **Rewards,**

 **20,000 exp**

 **New information**

 **Failure,**

 **Death**

 **YES/NO?**

And now he knew what he was going to do next.

"Thank you Myrtle. You've been very helpful," Harry said, with a smile as he pressed yes on the quest.

Myrtle's ghostly cheeks fogged up, and Harry realised with some surprise that the girl was blushing. With a shrill 'Eeep!', she rose up in the air, turned over, and dived headfirst into the toilet, vanishing from sight, although from the direction of her muffled sobs, she had come to rest somewhere in the U-bend.

Harry considered trying to talk to the ghost, but gave it up as a lost cause and headed out of the bathroom before jogging off towards the stairs.

He had an acromantula to find.

* * *

Dean Thomas had not been feeling well today.

With the petrifaction of Hermione and Lockhart's hospitalization, he had just been feeling all sorts of horrible when he had gone to sleep, and when he'd woke up this morning, he had immediately realised stress had taken his toll on his body.

He had woken up late in the morning with a fever.

At first, he had simply elected to rest in his dorms, but when he had simply proceeded to feel more and more horrible as the sun rolled across the sky, he had realized that he needed medical assistance.

Which was why when the dusk started to fall and he was sure that it wasn't bright enough outside to hurt his eyes or something, he pushed himself off of his bed and headed down the Gryffindor tower to the hospital wing.

However, his trip wasn't meant to be all that smooth, because about halfway to the hospital wing as he turned a corner in the second-floor corridors, he saw something that made him grind to a halt.

Near the spot where Mrs. Norris had been found petrified all those months ago, there was a message painted permanently into the wall. It wasn't that old message that had chilled him to the bones, however.

It was the small figure that was daubing another bloody message right underneath the first one.

 _Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever._

A small draft blew through the halls, making the torchlight flicker and cast a light on the small figure's face. Lisa Turpin, he remembered with a small chill. The Ravenclaw girl.

'Is _she_ the heir?' he thought incredulously as he tried to stay unnoticed.

Lisa finished daubing the message in, and with a wave of her wand, removed the paint that coated her fingers before she quickly headed into the girl's bathroom that was a few meters away from the spot.

Dean followed, his own illness forgotten as the prospect of finally finding the heir and making her pay for what happened to Hermione presented itself to him. He tiptoed over to the doors of the bathroom, where he cracked open the door as quietly as he could before peering in.

The girl was standing next to the sink, bent over a tap as if looking for something.

Suddenly, she opened her mouth and let loose a guttural noise that sent chills down his spine, " _Hashsssshaaaasaaaa_ "

Parseltongue, he remembered.

The mark of a descendant of Slytherin. If there had been any doubt that Turpin was the Heir in his mind, it was now well and truly gone.

The tap she was hissing at suddenly glowed and began to spin. Next second, the sink began to move, sinking right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed.

It took him all his restraint to not gasp.

The girl lowered herself into the pipe before she let go, dropping down to wherever she was going to with a whoosh of wind. The sink started rising back up, and at that moment, Dean knew that he had a choice to make. He could go back and call the teachers, or he could follow the girl down the pipe.

'But she had spoken parseltongue to open the pipe', he thought. If he went back to get the teachers now, then there would be no way for them to teachers get into the sink. With almost no time left to think, he immediately made a decision and slipped through the door as he dashed towards the opening in the ground.

"Gryffindors charge bravely ahead," he told himself as he jumped into the pipe, just as the sink closed back up above him.

It was like rushing down an endless slide. After what felt like a full minute, he landed on something soft and crunchy, and when he looked up, a pair of giant yellow eyes were staring back at him.

His body seized up, and he knew no more.

* * *

"ID Escape," Harry muttered and appeared in the real world in a Forbidden Forest clearing near the edge of the forest. The sun had finally gone down, and the moon was shining brightly in the sky, bathing the clearing in a silvery light. It was finally dark enough for what Harry needed to do.

Pulling out Gandiva from his inventory and notching a fire arrow in it, Harry aimed it at the sky and let it fly. Sending a small tendril of mana to the fire as the burning arrow reached its highest point above the forest canopy, Harry made the fire explode into a bright fireball for an instant before he extinguished it, not wanting to start any forest fires.

It was a short signal, but the people whose attention he was trying to get were quite vigilant. They would've seen it.

Harry stood there for a few minutes before the distinct noise of clip-clopping hooves reached his ears. He put Gandiva back into his inventory, not wanting to appear threatening just as half a dozen centaurs armed with drawn bows burst into the clearing with a familiar form at the lead.

"Good evening Firenze," he said to the group's leader, who raised a hand, telling the others to stand down. The other centaurs lowered their bows and backed off, but Harry could tell that they were watching from the edge of the clearing.

"You caused quite a panic at the tribe, Harry Potter. The elders were close to predicting that the forest's chosen wizard was in danger." the centaur said, walking closer to Harry.

"I really do apologize for any inconvenience caused Firenze," Harry said, "but I needed someone from the centaur tribe to help me find the acromantula colony that has been living here. Perhaps you know of it? It started when one of them escaped from the school into the forest sometime about fifty years ago."

Firenze's expression had grown disapproving and guarded, "What do you want with the likes of Aragog and his children? Abandon whatever your wish is and leave Harry Potter. Only grave danger awaits any man who goes there."

"Do you guys at the tribe know what has been happening at the school? The petrifactions?" Harry asked, noting the name Aragog in the back of his mind as he changed his direction of approach.

"Yes we do," Firenze said, looking up at the night sky, "For some reason, the stars have been entirely too silent about it."

"The stars won't tell you anything Firenze. The person behind this has cast a Fidelius on himself. A charm that is capable of hiding the very existence of a secret. With that charm on the beast that is going around petrifying the people, it could do anything it wants…hurt whoever it wants and never be found or held responsible. But I think I know a way to break through it. Aragog is the key."

Firenze's eyes widened in shock, before he peered at his face, searching for something. Whatever it was, he must have found it, because he said, "Go east, and follow the spiders. Aragog will listen to you if you say that you are a friend of Hagrid's, but do not let yourself get surrounded. Do not trust them. Aragog is old, but his children are numerous, out of control and rowdy. Keep your bow handy…and stay safe."

He bowed at Harry, saying no more as he turned around and galloped back into the forest.

Harry kept an ear out until the sound of the hooves faded away before he activated his Unicorn Boost perk and ran to the east, plotting out the quickest route through the trees as he darted through the low hanging branches and vines, looking for some indication of what Firenze meant by following the spiders.

It didn't take him long to find out.

About five minutes of continuous full speed running later, he spotted something on the forest floor and stopped to investigate. Several large spiders were scuttling over the dead leaves and half-melted snow, moving in an unnaturally straight line as though taking the shortest route to a prearranged meeting.

A window suddenly popped up in the corner of his vision.

Ping!

 **Arachnid Empathy active!**

And in that moment, the line of spiders stopped moving. In his own mind, through his empathy skill, he could clearly sense every bit of primal fear and the need for safety that filled the spiders' mind, and he knew that each of those spiders knew his own fear, anger and worry, at least the best they could understand.

"I need to meet Aragog," he said, hoping that the spiders would somehow be able to understand his intentions through the empathy.

The spiders seemed to look at him curiously, before a spike of panic come through his empathy skill and they scattered completely.

Harry didn't even have time to turn around. There was a scuttle and a shuffle and a loud clicking noise, and suddenly he felt something long and hairy seize him around the middle and lift him off the ground so that he was hanging facedown.

"What do you want with Aragog, wizard?" whatever was holding him said. It was hard to comprehend its speech since it seemed oddly clickety sounding.

Harry could make out in the darkness that whatever it was had eight legs, and immediately knew that he was being held by one of Aragog's children. He held himself from simply burning the creature to a crisp and said what he hoped would get him to meet Aragog, "I am a friend of Hagrid's. Hagrid is in trouble and I need Aragog's help to save him."

There was no reply. He heard more clicking, and next moment, he was being carried away into the dark trees. He did not know how long he was in the acromantula's clutches, but he knew that the leaf-strewn ground around him when he stopped was now swarming with spiders.

Not tiny spiders like those surging over the leaves below. Spiders the size of carthorses, eight-eyed, eight-legged, black, hairy, gigantic. The massive specimen that was carrying Harry made its way down the steep slope of a vast hollow towards a misty, domed web in the very center, while its fellow brethren closed in all around it, clicking their pincers excitedly at the sight of its load.

Harry fell to the ground on all fours as the spider released him.

"Aragog!" the spider that had dropped him called, "Aragog!"

And from the middle of the misty, domed web, a spider the size of a small elephant emerged, very slowly. There was gray in the black of his body and legs, and each of the eyes on his ugly, pincered head was milky white. He was blind.

"What is it?" he said, clicking his pincers rapidly.

"Man," clicked the spider who had caught Harry.

"Is it Hagrid?" said Aragog, moving closer, his eight milky eyes wandering vaguely.

"Stranger. Says he is friend of Hagrid," clicked the spider. Click, click, click went the pincers of the spiders all around the hollow, as a wave of unease had spread through them. Aragog paused.

"Hagrid has never sent men into our hollow before," he said slowly.

"Hagrid is in trouble," said Harry quickly, trying to get his word in before the massive creature lost patience, "That's why I have come."

"In trouble?" said the aged spider, and Harry thought he heard concern beneath the clicking pincers. "But why has he sent you?"

Harry thought of getting to his feet but decided against it. Not showing any dominance and hostility seemed like a good thing to do. Besides, if he needed to escape, he simply had to say two words to drop into an ID. So he spoke from the ground, keeping his voice incredibly calm as he tried to use his Arachnid Empathy to connect to the ancient acromantula.

"They think that Hagrid's been setting something on students. Something that petrified them. They've taken him to Azkaban for it."

Aragog clicked his pincers furiously, "But that was years ago. I remember it well. That is why they made him leave the school. They believed that I was the monster that dwells in what they call the Chamber of Secrets. They thought that Hagrid had opened the Chamber and set me free."

"But you didn't come from the Chamber did you? It was something else. Some kind of snake. And it was all blamed on you." said Harry, eagerly. Aragog was providing information that he was sure no human would have remembered in the wake of the Fidelius. Maybe he _had_ actually found a way to break the Fidelius charm and expose the Heir.

"Yes," croaked the old spider. "It would have been my instinct to harm humans, but out of respect for Hagrid, I never did so. The body of the girl who was killed was discovered in a bathroom. I never saw any part of the castle but the cupboard in which I grew up."

Harry grinned. He finally knew where Myrtle had died! If he looked around in her bathroom enough, he was sure he could find some clue or the other to find where the entrance to the Chamber was.

"Do you know what did kill that girl?" he eagerly asked, looking for the last piece of the puzzle, but his words were drowned by loud clicking and the rustling of many long legs shifting around him.

"The thing that lives in the castle," said Aragog, "is an ancient creature we spiders fear above all others.I remember well, how I pleaded with Hagrid to let me go when I sensed the beast moving about the school. We do not speak of it. We do not name it. I never even told Hagrid the name of that creature, though he asked me, many times."

Harry could feel the spiders pressing together around him on all sides. Not wanting to use destructive force and lose any chance of finding out what the Beast really was, Harry decided to use the other approach.

"It will come for you!" he exclaimed, and the advancing spiders stopped. There was not a click to be heard.

"What do you mean?" Aragog rasped.

"Do you think that wizards will stop it this time? That you'll stay safe in this hollow of yours? Oh no you won't. The beast is protected by a charm that completely hides it from wizards' senses. If you don't tell me what the creature is right now, then soon it will kill everything that remains in the castle. How long do you think it will take for it to kill all of your children?"

He used Gamer's mind to isolate his sense of fear from the rest of his emotions and sent it down the empathy link, making sure that every single one of the hundreds of spiders in the clearing could feel it clearly. Aragog paused, his unseeing eyes looking around as his legs shifting uneasily.

He was considering it, Harry could tell from his empathy link. And from that link, he knew the exact moment the ancient spider made up his mind.

"They call it a basilisk," Aragog said quickly and quietly, and a loud outbreak of clicking and rustling of many long legs shifting angrily broke out as large black shapes shifted all around him just as a ping went off.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Find the acromantula colony and talk to them**

 **Rewards,**

 **20,000 exp**

 **New information**

Ping!

 **A skill has leveled up due to calm use!**

 **Blackmailing Lv- 10 (21%)**

 **This is your ability to make another person do something you want by expressly using some sort of leverage against them. The higher the level, the more chance of success!**

 **(25 + Lv of Bullshitting)% chance of success, less based on how extreme the demand is.**

But Harry saw none of that.

The moment he had heard the word 'basilisk', a blinding, mind-numbing headache had burst in his head.

Seeing the edges of his vision blacken, Harry held onto his head as he croaked out, "ID Create," and dropped into an ID where, safe from the gigantic spiders that could eat him at any moment, he lost consciousness.

* * *

When Harry woke up, much to his relief, his headache was fully gone.

A quick look at the watch told him that he had been unconscious for over an hour. Pushing himself up onto his feet, Harry headed back onto the Hogwarts grounds, where he popped back out into the real world.

He had to tell the Professors what he'd found.

He had barely made it past the greenhouses and into the castle corridor, when suddenly a musical trill sounded from above, making him look up at the direction the sound came from. It was Hedwig, he happily realized, flying down at him from the direction of the Ravenclaw tower.

He hadn't spent any time with his familiar today at all, and apparently, she was happy to see him too. He held out his arm, on which his phoenix flapped down onto, before jumping onto his shoulder. Harry gave her a smile, ruffling her back feathers before he explained all that he had done today to her.

However, it was near the end of his telling that he encountered a problem.

"And the acromantula told me that the beast of Slytherin was actually a-" Harry suddenly choked over his own spit, unable to say anything.

And it was at that moment, he remembered that the Fidelius's secret could only be spoken by its secret keeper, which he wasn't. He hadn't broken the Fidelius charm…he had simply cheated his way into it, and was now stuck with a secret that he couldn't tell anybody. Even if he told the teachers about the entrance, they would be walking into a suicide mission without knowing what awaited them in the chamber.

Fuck.

He didn't let the frustration cloud his senses though. This little conundrum left him with only one solution. Find the heir and stop him all by himself.

Looking at his familiar, Harry realized that there was another way that he could let Hedwig know the secret.

He quickly pulled out _Fantastic Beasts and where to find them_ and opened it to the page where Basilisks were talked about. He showed it to Hedwig, who he knew had learned to read English from Fawkes. Hedwig peered at the page before looking at him, her beady eyes wide.

Thankfully, Hedwig not being a human meant that the Fidelius wouldn't affect her and that she would be able to read the page clearly.

"That is the beast," Harry said, and the Fidelius allowed only that much. Hedwig was now in on the secret and could help him with finding the entrance, which would be more than invaluable since her eyesight was a hundred times better than his.

However, his pleasant feeling wasn't to last.

Suddenly, echoing through the corridors came Professor McGonagall's voice, magically magnified. "All remaining students are immediately to return to their House dormitories at once. All teachers return to the staff room. There has been another attack."

Harry's eyes widened as implications of what could have happened filled his mind. Another petrifaction? An attack on the petrified students? A killing?

"Staffroom Hedwig! Quick!" he told his familiar, pushing down his foreboding thoughts. With a quick chirp of agreement, Hedwig spread her wings and fire filled his vision.

When the flames receded, they were in a nook just off of the staff rooms. Letting Hedwig get into his expanded pocket, Harry put on his invisibility cloak and headed out of the nook and hid just outside the door of the staff room. He needed to hear who had been attacked before he could do anything.

The teachers started flooding in one by one, some looking puzzled, others downright scared. And then Professor McGonagall walked into the room.

"It has happened," Harry heard her tell the silent staff room. "Students have been taken by the monster into the Chamber itself."

Gasps started around the room, before Snape's voice interrupted them, "How can you be sure?"

"The Heir of Slytherin," said Professor McGonagall, "has left another message. Right underneath the first one. 'Her skeleton will lie in the Chamber forever.'"

"Who is it?" said Madam Hooch's voice, "Which student?"

"Lisa Turpin," Professor McGonagall's tone sounded broken as she answered, "We will have to send all the students home tomorrow…This is the end of Hogwarts."

There was no more talking. One by one, the teachers walked out of the room. Meanwhile, Harry was busy asking himself why the heir would take the quiet Ravenclaw girl of all people.

Had she known something?

Had she come across something that had set the heir on edge?

Why her?

All these questions and more filled his mind as he headed into an abandoned classroom nearby, where he pulled off his cloak and had Hedwig flame him up to Myrtle's bathroom.

The ghostly girl wasn't present there, probably off with the other ghosts trying to get straggler students to go back to their dorms as per Professor McGonagall's orders. Harry let Hedwig out of his pocket.

"Look for something out of the ordinary. It's probably related to snakes and well hidden," he told her, and the phoenix flew up, looking for anything like Harry had described.

Meanwhile, Harry himself was considering using something that he had promised himself he wouldn't use anymore at Hogwarts. Mage Sight. The Hogwarts castle was overflowing with magic, which of course made Mage sight completely useless if you did not want to get blinded by the sheer intensity of the light. But this was one of those situations that felt like it was worth the pain.

"Mage sight activate," he muttered.

Nope.

Bad idea.

Almost blinded by the sheer intensity of light, Harry quickly shut his eyes and deactivated the ability, trying to stop a headache from forming. The bathroom was pretty much near the center of the castle, and the only thing he was able to see was pure burning white. It was rather stupid of him to even bother trying.

Just as he had pulled up his healing ability and healed away his headache, a trill sounded from across the room. Trying to blink out the spots in his eyes, he looked over at where Hedwig was calling him from.

She was perched on a sink, pecking one of the copper taps.

Harry hurried over to it and looked at the sink closely before he finally saw it. Scratched on the side of one of the copper taps was a tiny snake.

"Observe," he immediately cast at the tap.

 **Entrance to the Chamber of Secrets**

 **The tap requires a Password from anyone who wishes to gain entry. This password is given to this tap, which can give access to the pipe which leads to the Chamber.**

 **Password - Any Parseltongue phrase**

Suddenly a window popped up in the corner of his vision.

 **Parseltongue Skill Active!**

" _Open up,_ " he said, and at once the tap glowed with a brilliant white light and began to spin. Next second, the sink began to move, sinking right out of sight, leaving a large pipe exposed, a pipe wide enough for a man to slide into.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Save Lisa and defeat the beast of the Chamber!**

 **Rewards,**

 **80,000 exp**

 **10 stat points**

 **Skill book!**

 **Failure,**

 **Death**

 **YES/NO?**

Taking a deep breath, he pressed yes, before casting a _Bombarda_ on the sink, exploding it to pieces. If he somehow didn't make it, then at least people who couldn't speak Parseltongue; people like Aurors and investigators; would be able to enter the chamber.

He grabbed onto Hedwig's legs as she lifted him up, and together, they descended down into the Chamber of Secrets.

* * *

 **I've been worrying about posting this chapter. There are always a bunch of people who hate seeing character death and get angry at the authors for writing them, but hey, I have to tell the story I set out to tell, so I'll just have to weather the flames and angry reviews.** **There were always going to be casualties in this plotline and Dean was one of them. His death will unleash multiple new plotlines and will have a long-lasting impact on the story.** **This was the longest chapter yet, with a whole lot of setups paying off. Let me know what you thought of it.**

 _ **Dark times ahead...**_


	34. Book-II:The Red Eyed Girl

Chapter 14:

It was like slowly going down a slimy, dark slide. He could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as large as theirs, which twisted and turned, sloping steeply downwards. He knew that they were flying slowly deeper below the school than even the dungeons. It eerily quiet, with no other sound around except the occasional tip tap of water and the rhythmic flapping of Hedwig's wings above him.

After a minute or so of careful maneuvering, the pipe leveled out, and he dropped down onto the slimy, damp floor of a dark stone tunnel large enough to stand in. Hedwig fluttered down onto his shoulder as he looked around the tunnel.

"We must be miles under the school. Under the lake," said Harry as he looked at the wet, slimy ceiling of the tunnel, his voice echoing in the black tunnel. Hedwig chirped in uneasy agreement, looking around with peeled eyes for any movement in the darkness.

Harry lifted his hand, intending to light up a fire before he stopped himself.

If the Basilisk was nearby, attracting its attention with a fireball was going to be the last thing he wanted to do.

No.

Stealth was the way to go.

Dipping a hand into the inventory and pulling out the Invisibility Cloak, Harry wrapped it around himself and Hedwig. Deciding to trust his senses, for now, he walked off into the tunnel, trying to avoid making any splashes in the puddles of water on the floor.

The next few moments Harry quietly moved, listening hard for any sound that could make it to him, be it cries of help from the abducted Ravenclaw girl or the crunching bones underneath a slithering basilisk. He found neither. But what he did find, was much more…disturbing.

As he turned a dark bend in the tunnel, he caught sight of something giant and curved. It wasn't moving. However, before he could do anything, Hedwig suddenly gave a loud screech before vanishing from his shoulder with a burst of flames. She reappeared a few feet away, whereupon with a screech of anger, she started scratching and tearing at the structure.

In a corner of his mind, Harry realized that Hedwig was making a lot of noise and that he should probably stop her, but that corner was mostly ignored as he took in the _massive_ snakeskin of a vivid and poisonous green color, lying curled and empty across the tunnel floor. The basilisk that had shed it must have been at least fifty feet in length.

A quick calculation in his head, and Harry knew that the basilisk that had been terrorizing the school wasn't a young one.

"Bugger," he muttered to himself, "That's big."

An older basilisk presented a whole host of problems that a younger one wouldn't have. Problems like the size, resistance to all forms of wand magic that he knew, resistance to the fire that was his own favored weapon, immense strength, swift-acting and powerful venom, nigh impenetrable skin and an _instantly_ fatal gaze.

Bugger indeed.

Harry shook his head, shaking off the worry that had started to set in with the help of Gamer's Mind and opened up his skill window and started looking through his skills. He needed a plan if he was to come out of a confrontation with the Beast alive.

It took him a while of ruffling through skills and spells and an old science book that he had nicked from his old school's library, but he cobbled together a rough plan in a few minutes, which wasn't all that reliable but was definitely better than nothing. He was about to close the skill window when something caught his eye.

 **Dragon's Breath, Lv-1**

 **A concentrated breath of fire mimicking the magical properties of Dragon fire. Capable of burning through almost anything, and can be used for metal work too.**

 **1% level of control**

 **Cost - 1000 MP**

It was tempting to consider using this. A skill that had killed a Dementor…

'No…No. A 1000 MP cost and a 1% level of control…This skill needs to be leveled up a lot before I could use it reliably,' he thought. And if the control failed him in between the battle, then he would have no idea what would happen. Would the fire puffer out, or would it just burn _him_ down, or would it just suck all his magic out like a ward? It was all too blurry to fit in a plan about a situation as dangerous as this. Besides, he had Hedwig, and that was an advantage that was too good to ignore.

So he tore his eyes away from the screen, closed it, and called for Hedwig who had finally stopped pecking at the shed skin. "Hedwig! You're making a ruckus. We need to stay quiet," he scolded. The bird gave an apologetic tweet before bursting into flames and reappearing on Harry's shoulder. After taking a few minutes to instruct her on what to do, he pulled the Cloak snug around them and stepped past the giant snakeskin.

The tunnel turned and turned again, and every nerve in Harry's body was tingling. He wanted the tunnel to end, yet dreaded what he'd find when it did. And then, at last, as he crept around yet another bend, he saw a solid wall ahead on which two entwined serpents were carved, their eyes set with great, glinting emeralds. Harry approached, casting an Observe.

 **Snake themed Door**

 **The wall-door requires a Password from anyone who wishes to gain entry. This password is given to this door, which can give access to the Chamber.**

 **Password - Any Parseltongue phrase**

Suddenly a window popped up in the corner of his vision.

 **Parseltongue Skill Active!**

" _Open_ ," he said in a faint low hiss to the snakes, who looked strangely alive with their flickering emerald eyes. And lo and behold, the serpents parted. The wall cracked open, the halves slid smoothly out of sight, and Harry walked inside on tiptoes.

He was standing at the end of a very long, dimly lit chamber. Towering stone pillars entwined with more carved serpents rose to support a ceiling lost in darkness, casting long, black shadows through the odd, greenish gloom that filled the place. A hundred questions filled his mind at the same time. Could the basilisk be lurking in a shadowy corner, behind a pillar? And where was Lisa? Was she dead?

He quietly moved forward between the serpentine columns. The hollow eye sockets of the stone snakes seemed to be following him. More than once, with a jolt of the stomach, he thought he saw one stir. He kept his eyes narrowed, ready to clamp them shut at the smallest sign of movement.

Then, as he drew level with the last pair of pillars, a statue high as the Chamber itself loomed into view, standing against the back wall.

Harry had to crane his neck to look up into the giant face above. It was ancient and monkeyish, with a beard that fell almost to the bottom of the wizard's stone robes, where two enormous grey feet stood on the smooth Chamber floor. And between the feet, facing towards the statue, stood the figure of a tall black-haired boy fiddling with something that was blocked from his view by the figure's body.

Suddenly, a loud painful screech of static, not unlike an old telly, filled the Chamber. Before Harry could even lift his hands to cover his ears, it stopped, and a piano started playing. The figure stepped back, and a playing gramophone came into view, sitting on a spindly table.

Whoever it was, was comfortable enough to play music in a situation like this, and that didn't sit right with Harry. Harry frowned, and cast an Observe on the figure and waited for the window to pop up.

Nothing. Nothing at all.

The piano from the gramophone had stopped playing by the time Harry confusedly wondered if what was happening and why the Observe wasn't showing up, having led smoothly further into the song where a guitar strummed rhythmically in the background, and a saxophone played a soothing jazz.

The figure turned around, and much to Harry's shock, looked at him straight through his Cloak with a smile.

"I wondered whether I'd be meeting you here, Potter," he said with an unnerving smile, slightly blurring around his edges. Harry uneasily noted the blurring and wondered if this was a ghost.

And then it hit him. Maybe it was the red eyes or maybe it was the familiar words that he had heard from the mouth of Quirrell a year ago, but Harry instantly knew without a single shred of doubt that he was talking to Lord Voldemort.

"You!" he spat almost involuntarily, letting his cloak slide off of his shoulders, "What did you do to Lisa!?"

Meanwhile, Hedwig quickly grabbed the cloak in her talons, flew up into the air and perched herself on the head of one of the snakes that wound around the Chamber's pillars, obeying Harry's instructions of keeping herself as much out of danger as possible.

Riddle keenly watched Hedwig fly up into the heights, ignoring Harry's question. After Hedwig had found her perch, he turned to him and said, "You know who I am. How?"

A spike of pain in his head suddenly startled Harry. A window had popped up in front of him.

Ping!

 **Legilimency attack averted.**

"That trick doesn't work on me Riddle," Harry spat at him, wincing under the spike of pain.

Riddle's eyebrows rose and the smile fell off his face, "How do you know that name?"

"Doesn't take much to figure it out," Harry snarked, before he stifled his anger and activated Gamer's Mind to its full extent.

The world around him slowed to a crawl as his mind sped up to incredible rates.

Alright, he told himself. The situation had suddenly gone worse than rock bottom. Now he had to deal with a basilisk _and_ an incorporeal teenage dark lord who he didn't have the element of surprise on anymore since the dark wizard had seen him use his abilities when he had faced him last year.

 _Great!_

He started to scan through anything and everything he knew about Voldemort. He could attack him, but as far as he knew, he had no way of hurting spirits or ghosts. Furthermore, he had to find Lisa, and the only way to do that was to find out where Voldemort took her. Since he couldn't force him to tell him, he'd have to trick him.

'What is Voldemort's weakness?' Harry asked himself, 'What is his Achilles heel?'

It didn't take too long for him to figure it out.

Voldemort was a megalomaniac. He enjoyed bragging. He enjoyed letting his victims know how well he had played them, and how they were completely helpless in front of his genius and power and were facing certain death. So if he could convince him to _tell_ him about his plan, he would be able to find Lisa.

But Voldemort wasn't an idiot. He wouldn't go around monologuing to someone who he thought was going to beat him and foil his plans. Harry needed to make himself appear weak and powerless if he wanted to find out where Lisa was.

A rudimentary plan formed, the world around him sped back up.

"Doesn't it?" Riddle continued, his face expressionless, "I'd always thought that I hid it well en-" His spiel was interrupted when a ball of fire passed straight through him and hit Slytherin's toe behind him.

'Two birds with one stone,' Harry thought. He now knew for sure that his wandless magic couldn't hurt Riddle and that he _was_ actually a spirit. And he also set up his act of looking helpless in front of him.

Ping!

 **A skill has leveled up due to clever planned use!**

 **Theatrics, Lv- 9 (30%)**

 **You have a penchant for the grand, a wish to bedazzle and the desire to intimidate. This skill helps you achieve it.**

Harry closed the window. Something about Riddle's expression was making Harry uneasy. Riddle was looking at Harry's hand with an expression of utmost shock and surprise. That surprise, he noted with some befuddlement. There was no faking that. Somehow, Voldemort was not only younger than when he had faced him last time, he also didn't have any memories of their last confrontation, where he had _clearly_ seen him use his wandless magic.

Nevertheless, he had a plan to stick to. So he forced an expression of utter shock and terror onto his face.

"What _are_ you?" he whispered, injecting terror into his voice, "How did that not hurt you?"

Riddle's surprise vanished, replaced by a greedy victorious expression, "I've wanted to see you for the longest time, Harry. To speak to you. And now that we meet, you have surprises up your sleeve! Wandless magic…occlumency…all so similar to my own. It's a shame that Lord Voldemort would never even consider sparing someone who brought about his fall. And to have gotten into this chamber…I heard you speak the Parseltongue near the door…Such a waste."

Harry stared at him. There was something very funny going on here. "You speak like you aren't Voldemort?"

Riddle chuckled, "That would be because I am not. I am a memory Harry, of my younger self, stored in a container that I broke free from. Your dear housemate, whom I presume you wished to save when you came running down here, really helped me with that."

A memory…so that was why Riddle hadn't known about his wandless magic before. Harry spirits lightened a bit. That meant that this Riddle had no idea what else he could do! He had gotten the element of surprise back! And his plan of getting him to talk about Lisa was working too!

"What are you talking about?" he asked, "Lisa helped you?"

"She did indeed," said Riddle, "Although not quite willingly. My container, my diary, was something that she quite loved. She has been writing in it for months, telling me all her pitiful worries…And I've been writing back."

All the time he spoke, Riddle's eyes never left Harry's face. There was an almost hungry look in them.

"It's amazing how far sympathy gets you isn't it…" Riddle laughed, a high cold laugh, that didn't suit him. A chill ran down Harry's back. "Lisa poured out her soul to me, and I took all that I needed. Her magic, her body, her soul. She belongs to me. And now, with her body and magic, I finally will have my own body back."

"It was Lisa," Harry whispered out with wide eyes as he made the connection, "She opened the Chamber of Secrets."

"Very smart of you Harry," Tom said with the delighted tone of a teacher whose student had solved a particularly difficult question, "Much like how I did half a century ago, she opened the chamber. Of course, she didn't know what she was doing. I took great care of that. I made her mind impenetrable. Made her _obedient_."

Anger coursed through Harry's body as his nails dug into the palms of his clenched fists. Voldemort had ruined yet another life. Yet another innocent future…destroyed.

No, he told himself, halting that train of thought. He couldn't give up on Lisa now, not after he had come this far. He had to save her. No matter how.

"You framed Hagrid didn't you?"

Riddle laughed his high laugh again. "It was my word against Hagrid's. On the one hand, Tom Riddle, poor but brilliant, parentless but so brave, school prefect, model student…on the other hand, big, blundering Hagrid, in trouble every other week, trying to raise werewolf cubs under his bed, sneaking off to the Forbidden Forest to wrestle trolls. The plan worked well."

"I bet Dumbledore saw right through you," said Harry, his teeth gritted. If only that _stupid_ Fidelius wouldn't have still been on the Basilisk, he would have gotten Hedwig to flame the entire staff in here, and it would have all been over in minutes.

"Well, he certainly kept an annoyingly close watch on me after Hagrid was expelled," said Riddle carelessly. "I knew it wouldn't be safe to open the Chamber again while I was still at school. So I decided to leave behind a diary, preserving my sixteen-year-old self in its pages, so that one day, with luck, I would be able to lead another in my footsteps, and finish Salazar Slytherin's noble work."

"And now what?" he asked, fighting to keep his voice steady, "You've lost haven't you? The school is closing down. The petrified people will be awake soon. The chamber will be discovered. And what was all this for? Your sick pleasure?"

Riddle's smile turned into a chilling grin, "I suppose you are not so smart after all Harry. There is always an endgame to a plan as brilliant as mine. Can you not guess what a disembodied spirit wants the most? Can you not figure it out Harry? You've met my future self after all."

And it was then that it hit Harry.

"You want a body."

Two Voldemorts…that was the endgame. This…memory wanted to get a body himself, and then help the real Voldemort get a body too.

"Indeed. My spirit and Lisa's now reside together in her body, and she will help me regain mine. In fact, right now, as you pathetically try to wriggle out her location from me, the potion for the creation of my body is being brewed through its final step."

Harry blood chilled. Riddle had seen right through his attempts at manipulation.

"Wh-Why," he stuttered, "Why are you telling me all this then?"

"Why stalling of course," Riddle exclaimed, much to Harry shock, "You see, I can't cast magic through my host's body directly before being dipped the Draught of Restoration. So I created a little illusion that I can control. A mirage in the Chamber through whose eyes I can see, if you will."

Riddle's blurry outline started to blur and flicker even more.

"While it can't cast magic, it can stall just fine until my Beast, which I had sent on a little errand, comes back. I can hear him in the pipes above now, although you will not quite be able to sense him. A rather nifty little spellwork on my part if I do say so myself. But don't worry. Your death will be quick and painless. That I promise you."

Riddle…No. The illusion smiled at him one last time before it turned and looked up into the stone face of Slytherin, high above it in the half-darkness.

 _"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four!"_

There was the sound of stone grinding against stone, and Slytherin's gigantic stone face was moving, his mouth opening, wider and wider to make a huge black hole. And something was stirring inside the statue's mouth. Something was slithering up from its depths.

Harry backed away as he shut his eyes tight and activated Mage Sight just in time to see a huge serpentine shape thick as an oak trunk with a poisonous green glow hit the chamber floor with a loud thud. Harry felt it shudder and watched as it uncoiled itself from Slytherin's mouth.

Then he heard Riddle's hissing voice, " _Kill him._ " And with that, the flickering glow of Riddle's illusion faded away and the serpent lunged.

Harry activated Unicorn Boost and rushed to the side, dodging the serpent's attack, feeling confident despite the fear that ran through him. This he knew was going to happen. This he had a plan for. He immediately cast an Observe on the Beast.

 **Basilisk**

 **Lv-95**

 **HP:98400/98400**

 **MP: 600/600**

 **Str- 95**

 **Vit- 81**

 **Dex-38**

 **Int-19**

 **Wis-21**

 **Luc-0**

 **The Serpent of Slytherin is a female Basilisk placed by Salazar Slytherin inside the Chamber of Secrets and can only be controlled by his heir. She is venomous, possesses incredible strength and durability, is resistant to majority of spells, and direct contact with her gaze results in death.**

 **Kill to get- 15,000 Exp.**

The Observe contained nothing that Harry hadn't already known, but it was good to have it confirmed.

The Basilisk, however, wasn't exactly foolish. While Harry had his attention divided, it turned and boxed him in with the wall with its body. It was when he closed the window, he realized his predicament. Just as the giant snake lunged at Harry again, who was desperately looking for a way to dodge, he felt claws dig into his shoulder and he disappeared from the spot in a burst of flames, leaving the Basilisk to smash its face against the stone floor.

Harry reappeared on the other side of the hall.

"Thanks, Hedwig," Harry said as his avian friend puffed her chest up, "There's no point in wasting time, let's put the plan into action now."

Hedwig gave a sharp nod and rose into the air with a determined trill, before flying off with a burst of speed towards the Basilisk. Harry wanted to make sure that she was alright, but dared not waste any time, instead speeding off towards the door with the snakes on it, through which he had entered the Chamber. Turning off Mage Sight so that he could tell the door apart from the walls around it, Harry quickly hissed out, " _Close_ "

Much like how the serpents had parted as the wall had cracked open, the halves reappeared, and smoothly slid shut with a thud.

Behind him, Hedwig was doing a fantastic job of distracting the Basilisk. Harry closed his eyes, turned Mage Sight back on and looked back into the chamber. The Basilisk had moved to the center of the Chamber, where the enormous serpent had raised itself high in the air and its great blunt head was weaving drunkenly between the pillars. Hedwig was soaring around its head, and the basilisk was snapping furiously at her with fangs, long and thin as sabers.

Harry dipped into his inventory and pulled out a pencil nub that he had idly thrown in there once. Making sure that there was little to no graphite on the nub, Harry tossed it at the serpent. It landed on the floor near the spot where the Basilisk was tussling with Hedwig.

And it was time.

"Hedwig! It's time!" Harry called loudly. Taking the cue, Hedwig burst into flames and reappeared on Harry's shoulder.

"Listen, Hedwig. As soon as I cast the spell, get us out into the tunnel outside. _FULGURIS!_ " Harry yelled, aiming at the pencil nub and pushing as much mana into the spell as he could.

As soon as the burst of lightning left his wand, Hedwig immediately flamed them out of there and into the tunnel outside.

Amongst all his training in the spell and using it to convert metal to metal, the one thing Nicholas had told Harry to never do was to overdo an Alchemical Transmutation. Since alchemy worked by fiddling with the atom's structure itself, overdoing the spell risked setting off a nuclear reaction which, as any muggle worth his salt could tell you, is usually a dangerous thing.

Harry's aim struck true, and temperature of the pencil stub rose millionfold to the point that it was flash-heated to that of the surface of the sun. The Carbon atoms in the nub structurally burst open into electrons protons and neutrons. The protons then interacted with the Hydrogen in the air around them to undergo one of the most common and powerful nuclear reactions in the known universe called the Proton-Carbon cycle.

In short, literal milliseconds after Harry and Hedwig teleported out, an explosion the size of a dozen hand grenades rocked the Chamber.

BOOM!

As soon as Harry reappeared outside the Chamber, he dropped to his knees and shielded himself and Hedwig as rocks and stones lodged in the roof of the tunnel that had gotten shaken loose and fell on them.

Finally, a minute later when the dust settled, Harry rose to his feet and dusted himself off. Hedwig shook herself, flapping her wings to shake the dust off them before trilling apprehensively at Harry.

"I don't want to go in too, Hedwig," said Harry, "But we have to help Lisa."

And turning to the entrance, he hissed, " _Open_ " making the serpents part and the halves slide out of view.

Hedwig flew in, scoping out the situation as Harry gingerly stepped into the room with eyes closed and Mage Sight on.

"Are the snake's eyes closed?" he asked his phoenix, who flapped over to the now unmoving glowing green serpent to check before trilling out an affirmative.

Harry opened his eyes and shut down Mage Sight before taking in the sight of what he had done.

Three of the pillars had completely broken down, and a lot of the others had cracks on them. The floor was cracked as well, though whether that was from the basilisk or the explosion, Harry did not know. Dust covered pretty much every surface, and Salazar Slytherin no longer had much of a lower body, since one of his legs, both his arms and much of his abdomen were now simply missing. And in the middle of Chamber, massive and unmoving, lay the Basilisk. The snake must have been thrown around and roughed up pretty bad in the explosion because it looked bent up in a lot of wrong ways.

As the urgency of the situation set in, Harry quickly called for Hedwig, who had picked up his Cloak, put the cloak back into his Inventory, and headed towards the spot in between Slytherin's feet. Before, when he had mage sight on, he had absently noticed something that he wanted to check out.

Reaching the spot in between the feet, Harry noted that the gramophone that had been playing music must have been charmed unbreakable since it was still completely intact and playing that jazz. He shook off that thought before he turned on Mage Sight. Sure enough, one human-sized rectangular portion of the wall was much lighter than the rest. That, as Harry knew, meant that the wall had empty space behind it. He cast Observe.

 **Entrance to the inner Chamber**

 **The wall requires a Password from anyone who wishes to gain entry. This password is given to this wall, which can give access to the tunnel which leads to the inner chamber.**

 **Password - 'Salazar' in Parseltongue**

" _Salazar_ " he hissed, following the Observe's information, and the section of the wall slid down into the floor. With Hedwig on his shoulder, he walked into the tunnel with Mage Sight turned on, just in case there were any traps or wards.

The light from the chamber behind him soon disappeared around a bend, leaving him in complete darkness. It was a few moments and a couple more bends later that the end of the tunnel appeared, lit by a single torch in a torch bracket, a solid wall with a snake carved on it.

A hissed " _Open_ " later, the wall slid open, and what he saw left Harry shocked to a standstill.

Because in the small otherwise empty room in front of him, the familiar form of Dean Thomas stood in front of a bubbling potion in cauldron large enough to fit a man in. But that wasn't what shocked Harry. It was the fact that Dean was holding in his arms what appeared to be a very much alive Lisa Turpin.

And in front of Harry's wide eyes, Dean turned to look at him, his eyes eerily vacant, and not even looking away, dropped the girl into the burning potion.

"NO!" Harry yelled and lunged at Dean, tackling him into the ground. But it was too late. Lisa had fallen into the cauldron.

Quickly pushing himself onto his feet, Harry quickly used Pyromancy to stop the magical fire and quickly pushed the cauldron over its stand, tipping its entire contents out onto the floor.

The creamy potion splashed onto the floor, as did Lisa Turpin, who went sliding before she stopped by the wall. Her skin had turned red, and in places had burnt severely. Pulling out his wand, Harry quickly vanished as much of the potion as he could, taking the clear lack of a brand spanking new Voldemort to mean that he still must be inside the girl's body.

It was probably too much to hope that the potion would have killed off Voldemort's soul while keeping Lisa's alive.

"Observe" he cast, kneeling down beside the unconscious girl.

 **LeilsdadiR Tmuorpitn (Status: Shared Body-2 Souls, Unconscious, 2nd Degree burns)**

 **(Relationship Meter-0%)**

 **Lv-! $#!%! %! %!**

 **HP- $#/ $#**

 **MP-* &^%/*&^%**

 **Race-Wiztardch**

 **Str-!**

 **Vit-**

 **Dex-#**

 **Int-$**

 **Wis-%**

 **Luc-***

 **?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?**

Harry gritted his teeth. He was still in there. The name that her Observe was showing was a haphazard anagram of 'Lisa Turpin Tom Riddle'. And now he was stuck with an unconscious girl with the soul of the Dark Lord in her body, and his friend who had somehow ended up helping said individual.

Harry frowned and turned around to look at said friend. Something was off. Dean hadn't moved from the spot where Harry had tackled him down to.

"Dean?" Harry asked gingerly as he got up to his feet and walked over to where he was lying.

"Are…are you alright?" he asked, noticing with a sinking feeling in his stomach Dean's vacant unblinking eyes, and the fact that he wasn't breathing. "Ob-Observe," he cast stutteringly, and a window popped up.

 **Dean Thomas**

 **(Relationship Meter-0%)**

 **Lv-0**

 **HP-0/0**

 **MP-0/0**

 **Race-Dead Body**

 **Str-0**

 **Vit-0**

 **Dex-0**

 **Int-0**

 **Wis-0**

 **Luc-0**

 **Dean Thomas was a half-blood son of Jonathon Wright and Marie Corsaw. He grew up with his mother and stepfather until, at age eleven, he was accepted into Hogwarts. He was killed by Basilisk stare.**

 **He is dead.**

"No," Harry muttered as he read the last line, sinking onto his knees as his expression scrunched into a mask of horror, "No no no no no no no. NO!"

He suddenly shook his head, shaking off the tears that had started forming near his eyes. Now wasn't the time to lose himself in despair. There could be time. "He-healing touch…"

Nothing happened.

"Healing touch!" he said more forcefully, choking down the sobs that threatened to surface in his voice. Dean couldn't be dead. He just couldn't be. There had to be some way or the other to bring him back.

Again, nothing happened.

"Healing touch!" he said again. And yet again…nothing.

"Healing touch! Healing touch! Healing touch! HEALING TOUCH! HEALING TOUCH! HEALING TOUCH!" he yelled, his voice cracking as tears ran down his face, "Healing…touch…"

Suddenly, a veneer of red fell over his vision, and his tears stopped. An unfailing calm fell over his mind, and his head snapped around to look at Lisa lying a few feet away. But he didn't see the unconscious girl lying there. He saw the murderer of his parents, and now the murderer of his friend.

The ground underneath Lisa trembled before it turned fluid and started swallowing her up. Her legs went first, sinking with a cracking noise into the ground, and then it was her arms, and then her torso, until all of her that was left above the ground was her head and neck.

Harry calmly got up to his feet and walked over to stand in front of the almost entombed girl, before he pulled out his wand and snapped out an _Enervate_.

The eyes that opened were bright red, and somehow, completely percipient.

"You should be dead," she calmly said, although Harry clearly knew who was talking.

"So should you. Why did you kill Dean?" he asked calmly, staring unblinking and expressionless at his prisoner.

"How did you survive? She asked, her eyes gaining an odd gleam as she ignored his question, "The serpent wouldn't have let you come in here."

"She didn't have a choice."

"But the Fidelius-"

"Has no effect on me anymore."

The red eyes widened drastically before they darted over to his scar, and the girl burst out laughing. The shrill cold laughter echoed in the small room over and over again, and if in his current state Harry could have felt much of anything, he would have felt apprehensive and uncomfortable.

Instead, he simply asked, "Something funny Riddle?"

The laughter slowed into the occasional chuckle, before she answered with a grin on her face, "I was just thinking how lucky my _real_ self is, and how you have absolutely no idea what you are. What he made you into…"

This piqued Harry's interest. Was this something related to him being the Gamer? Maybe Riddle had seen something that he hadn't. "And what would that be?"

A chilling grin ripped across the girl's face, "Oh you'll find out. But not from me. Ha! This is just too good to be true!" and she burst out laughing again.

"You are not really in the position to show attitude, Riddle. I could crush your bones right now. You said you and Turpin share this body. So if she dies, you die. Answer my questions Riddle or else-"

The laughter stopped with a start.

"And what will you do if I do answer you Harry?" she sneered, "Let me go? You won't do that. Keeping you curious keeps me alive Harry, and I get more time to find a way out of this little trap of yours."

Harry stared at her, not responding.

"A little advice Harry. Learn to fear death. Not everyone dies a valiant death fighting Lord Voldemort as your parents did. Most people die meaningless deaths. Disease, accident, robbed, murdered…age…being in the wrong place at the wrong time. That was how your friend died."

Harry pushed down the spike of anger that threatened to push him over the wire-thin edge he was standing on.

The red-eyed girl continued, "Tell me, Harry, would it have made you feel better if I had told you that he was some vital part of my master plan? Essential, in fact, and that without his death, all my work would have been worthless? That his death was _needed_? It wasn't. He followed me down the entrance pipe, and my basilisk took care of him. He died a meaningless death, just like you and everyone you hold dear will when I inevitably rise again."

And she burst out laughing again.

Feeling his anger starting to bleed through his shields, Harry dropped to a knee and slammed his fist into the girl's face, knocking her out.

"That's enough," he said to himself, wiping the girl's nose blood off his fist. He pulled the golden ring he was wearing off his finger, before turning it into a bow. He pulled the string back, notching an arrow as he took aim at her.

One shot, and both of them would be finished. Riddle would be dead. Dean would be avenged, and Lisa would simply be collateral damage. He would dump her body in an ID, and she would simply become the girl who had been lost to the Heir.

No Auror would ever find her.

He stretched the string and frowned. He wasn't imagining it. Gandiva _was_ growing heavier in his hands, as if the ancient bow refusing to obey him this time. And in front of Harry's eyes, without his instruction, the arrow he had notched disappeared, and with a flash of light, the bow turned itself into its ring form and teleported itself onto his finger.

Harry frowned and cast an Observe on it.

 **The Gandiva**

 **This 6000 year old legendary bow is one of the most powerful magical weapons out there. It is indestructible, can create arrows inexhaustibly and fires arrows with the strength of a thousand bows. Its arrows can be enchanted to do a variety of things and can penetrate most magical shields. It can turn into a ring when not being used. When in ring form, it can protect its user from all forms of poison.**

 **Its unable to be lifted by anyone it judges unworthy. If you hold this, you've impressed a lot of right people.**

 **Attack-100 + (10 x level of Archery)**

 **+50% when used against the ill-intentioned.**

 **+100% when used by a magically competent being.**

There was nothing wrong with the bow. Harry shook his head. No matter. He didn't need a bow to end someone's life. Dropping the bow to the ground, he sent a thick tendril of mana into Lisa's bloodstream, fighting against her own magic as he focused it around her heart.

It would be quick and painless, he thought and was about to give the mana a single twitch to stop her heart, when suddenly the voice of a young girl reached his ears.

" _Don't do it, Harry!_ "

Harry whirled around, and the mana connection broke with a snap.

The voice had come from Hedwig, who had been quietly perched on the upturned cauldron and watching the events unfold.

"You're speaking…" he muttered in awe, looking at her with wide eyes.

Hedwig however, completely ignored his mutters, before agitatedly shifting her weight from foot to foot and ruffling her feathers, " _She is innocent Harry. She hasn't done anything. You can't just kill her._ "

"I have to!" Harry insisted, begging her to understand, "Don't you see? If Riddle gets out into the world, then there is no knowing what will happen! Just in a year, he did _this_ to the school! Imagine what two of him will do to the world at large!"

" _But you aren't killing to protect the world are you? You are killing for revenge. Revenge for Dean. That's why your bow stopped working..._ " Hedwig insisted, flapping her wings in agitation as she watched him keenly with her beady eyes.

"Does it matter that I killed for revenge? Riddle needs to be stopped, and killing Lisa is the way!"

" _It matters,_ " Hedwig insisted, " _It matters because Lisa doesn't deserve the retribution for Dean's death. Riddle does. It's not like you to justify murder for the greater good. You don't just take the easy road out. You find another way._ "

"There _is_ no another way!"

" _Then make one! You of all people can do it. No other wizard can do what you can Harry. And if you find the will, you can do anything. We can do anything._ "

And she was right, Harry dazedly thought as he turned and looked at her. He had gifts and powers beyond anything a wizard could hope for, and if there was anyone that could figure out a way to destroy Riddle's soul without killing Lisa, it was him. He pushed back the veil of cold rage that had taken over his thoughts, roughly shoved all his grief to deal with later, and activated Gamer's Mind to its fullest potential.

The world around him slowed down, and his mind started finding and evaluating anything and everything he had ever read, seen or heard about souls and magic, forming and discarding plans at breakneck speeds. It took him a while to find something that had some chance of working.

He looked back at Hedwig, "I have something. It's insane, and probably won't work-"

The next few minutes, he explained to Hedwig all that he needed her to do, and finally, with an uplifting trill, the phoenix flew over onto Harry shoulder.

Checking her status to make sure that Lisa was fully unconscious, Harry sent his mana into the floor, and slowly pushed her entire body out of the ground, before placing a hand on her. And then, he took a deep breath before he said the words.

"ID Create: Zombies!"

There was no sky, but he knew that they were now in an ID. Picking Lisa up and throwing her on his shoulder, Harry said, "Hedwig, London, please. The roof of our apartment."

There was only one place that he knew for a fact that this particular creature spawned, and that was Buckingham Palace. And in a situation like this, there was no taking chances. They burst into flames and reappeared on the roof of their apartment building. Harry quickly dropped Lisa onto the roof. The girl wasn't going anywhere with those broken limbs, and she would be safe from the zombies up here at this height.

Zombies, unlike Basilisks, had a clear and fatal weakness, and that was why Harry had no issues fighting with them. He quickly equipped the appropriate title for what he was about to do.

 **Apprentice Zombie killer- 30% more attack and defense when dealing with the undead. +5 to all stats when dealing with the undead.**

Gandiva burst into its bow form, once more perfectly weighted and ready to go. Harry jogged over to the ledge looked down at the mass of zombies that were hobbling along the road, making a beeline towards the direction of the Buckingham Palace, trashing and destroying everything along the way.

Thankfully, Hedwig knew the nearby area pretty well, so when Harry told her to take them to the roof of the Lancaster House, she knew exactly where to go. They burst into existence over the Lancaster House, from where to take stock of the situation.

Much like how he had seen months ago, hundreds of zombies were packed into the Victoria Memorial Crossing in front of the palace. Three enormous piles of zombies were lying unmoving in front of the Palace. Harry knew that they would turn into Legion Zombies as soon as he finished the horde outside the castle.

Letting Hedwig go fly high above the danger zone, Harry took aim, not wanting to hold back or stall anymore, and let three mighty Doom arrows fly in a giant arc into the center of the Crossing.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

The fountain at the center of the square blew up into pieces, and zombies being as flammable as they were, started burning the second even the smallest bit of flame hit them. Within seconds, the whole Crossing lit up like a firework.

But there was no more time to hold back. Even more zombies were flooding the Crossing from the streets, and while he had eliminated almost half the amount of normal zombies that the location had, he still had to deal with the remaining half, that was now aware of his location and was slowly hobbling towards the Lancaster house.

He let loose another two Doom arrows at the group that was trying to jump the fence of Green Park and trying to cross over to the house.

BOOM! BOOM!

And the entire group ended like that.

But in that time, the remaining zombies who had been coming from the other sides had come too close for him to use Doom arrows without completely destroying the very structure he was standing on. So Harry put his bow back into its ring form and started focusing his mana on creating a devastating attack that he knew was fatal to zombies.

He let loose a massive gust of wind, which coalesced into a massive swirling tornado, at the eye of which was the Lancaster house. As soon as the tornado was stable enough, he let loose a huge burst of fire into it, creating his largest ever fire tornado.

And in a few minutes, it was all over, leaving behind nothing but a boy and a bunch of gold dust covering the area around him.

With their trademark booming thunderous sound, one of the piles of zombies that lay in the corner of the Palace started to fuse together. But Harry had no time to waste. If he had wanted to get exp from the Legion, he would have had to wait for them to fully form, but since exp wasn't on his mind, he simply let loose a couple of Doom Arrows at each of the piles of zombies fusing into a Legion.

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

 **Critical Strike! Doom Arrow- 2200 x 700% = 15400 Attack!**

 **Critical Strike! Doom Arrow- 2200 x 700% = 15400 Attack!**

 **Critical Strike! Doom Arrow- 2200 x 700% = 15400 Attack!**

The piles of zombies exploded in massive showers of blood and gore, before turning into dust just as Harry regained his balance from all the shockwaves that had rocked through the ground.

And with that, the second tier boss in the zombie dungeon was finished.

'Soon,' he thought as he activated Unicorn Boost and ran over to the center of the Crossing, and waited for the only monster that could help him save Lisa to form.

The wind around him started to pick up as a cold feeling started to set in. With a warming trill, Hedwig alighted onto his shoulder. "Be ready," he told her, as he searched the skies for it.

It was a few seconds before he saw it. Flying at him from the skyline above the Buckingham Palace, illuminated by the rays of the waning moon, was a cloaked figure.

Harry wasted no time. He knew that the Dementor had seen him, and would follow him. Now it was time to lead it to Lisa. So he simply turned, activated Unicorn's Boost, and ran, making sure that the Dementor could see him clearly.

He ran and did not look back this time, instead focusing squarely on running as fast as he could down the Whitehall road towards his apartment, making sure to occasionally throw fireballs behind him to slow down the creature following him. The only reason he didn't stutter and fall like he had last time was that Hedwig was singing an uplifting song as she flew above him, keeping his heart full and helping him fight off the effects of the Dementor.

When he finally reached his apartment, Hedwig swooped down from above, grabbed him, and flamed him onto the top of the building, where Lisa was. Harry quickly moved into the right position that he had planned.

The Dementor, which was until now chasing Harry at the street level, rose to the roof's height in pursuit.

And that was the moment.

The moment where he could finally save Lisa. He was standing on one end of the roof, and the Dementor the other, while Lisa lay bound and unconscious in the middle. Logically, the Dementor should have gone for the prey closest to it, which was the more easily caught one.

It did the exact opposite.

It completely ignored the bound prey in front of it, and simply lunged over it at Harry, who in a blind panic, apparated him and Hedwig to a spot on the roof about three buildings away from where he was before.

"Why isn't it going for her?" Harry wondered puzzledly, watching the Dementor completely ignore the girl on Harry's building roof as it looked around for what was presumably him.

" _It has locked onto you. You are its target. Until it gets you, it won't go for any other prey,_ " Hedwig replied gravely.

"So how do we get him to attack her?" Harry asked, hoping his immortal friend would have an idea. Because he sure didn't.

Hedwig thought for a second, before saying, " _I remember reading in one of your books that Dementors sense its prey by their emotions since they don't have other senses_ "

And it clicked in Harry's mind.

If he somehow managed to empty himself of emotion to a degree that even a Dementor wouldn't be able to sense it, he could make the Dementor think he wasn't even there.

"Keep singing Hedwig," he simply said, before disapparating from the roof and reappearing on the roof with the Dementor. The amortal beast's head snapped towards him, and it started advancing on him. And Harry needed to make sure that the creature was convinced that Harry was dead, so he let it.

He could feel the creature watching him, hear its rattling breath like an evil wind around him. The Dementor seemed to be considering him as it closed in. It raised one of its rotting hands, and lowered its hood, exposing the grey scabbed skin, stretched blankly over empty sockets, and the mouth…a gaping, shapeless black hole, sucking the air with the sound of a death rattle.

Suddenly, A paralyzing terror filled Harry so that he couldn't move or speak. His mind seemed to fuse as the entire plan he had fuzzed out of his consciousness. 'Focus of Hedwig's song,' he tried to tell himself, but the thought disintegrated into wisps before it could even fully form. He stumbled down onto the floor.

A pair of strong, clammy hands suddenly attached themselves around Harry's neck. They were forcing his face upward…He could feel its breath sucking…He could feel its putrid breath…His mother was screaming in his ears again…

" _Remember Harry! Remember!_ " Hedwig's voice sounded in his head, snapping him out of his tizzy.

'This is not the end. Not today.' he thought to himself in his moment of clarity and pulled down every shield he had, turned up Gamer's Mind to its fullest extent, and pushed every single positive emotion he had into oblivion before flooding his own mind shields with mana.

The sucking stopped, the hands let go and the Dementor above him came into focus. It looked…faintly puzzled for a second before it straightened, believing this morsel of its food to be finished and heading over to the next one. Harry silently signaled for Hedwig to stay back.

Ping!

 **You have learned a new skill!**

 **Ghosting, Lv-1**

 **A clearing of emotions of the mind in the deepest levels that not even Gamer's Mind can control. This skill is a combination of mana and mind that can be used to hide from creatures that track people by the use of their emotions like Dementors.**

 **25% chance of success**

Ping!

 **Ghosting Active!**

He got to his feet, his entire being emotionless as he walked over to where the Dementor was bending over Lisa to take its next soul. It sucked, and just as Harry had hoped, the guest in the body came out first, a putrid black smoke that connected the Dementor to its prey.

With a final dull pop, the Dementor sucked out Riddle's soul, breaking the connection between them. And before it could go in for the second soul in the body, Harry activated his 'Iron Fist' ability, lit his fist on fire, and with a powerful punch, sent the Dementor flying off of Lisa's body. He had to get attention off of Lisa now and defeat the Dementor so that they could all get out of here.

There was only one ability that could do it, for that he needed something.

Rage.

One emotion a Dementor had no control over.

And he _knew_ that he had the rage. The events in the chamber had made sure of that. Emboldened by Hedwig's ongoing song, Harry walked over to the Dementor that was confusedly looking at him before grabbing its head with both arms, feeling its cold putrid breath on his skin.

Thoughts of Dean's dead body and Hermione's petrified form flew around his head as rage filled him, and a familiar burning hot feeling started in his stomach, fighting the bone-chilling cold of the Dementor's breath on his skin.

And with all that he had in him, he roared.

And whether by chance or by sheer force of will, despite the abysmal chances of the skill working, Harry's magic responded flawlessly, and a brilliant white pillar of fire erupted from his mouth, and tore away at the monster's skeletal face, broiling and incinerating its entire head. With its head burned off, the Dementor dropped motionless in front of Harry, unmoving before it turned into dust.

Drained, and exhausted, Harry dropped to his knees with a groan. 1000 MP, as he learned right now, was a lot to spend in one go.

Ping!

 **A skill leveled up!**

 **Dragon's Breath, Lv-2**

 **A concentrated breath of fire mimicking the magical properties of Dragon fire. Capable of burning through almost anything, and can be used for metal work too.**

 **5% level of control**

 **Cost - 950 MP**

" _Harry!_ " Hedwig fluttered down in front of him with a worried look, " _Are you alright?_ "

"I'm fine," he muttered, waving the window away and opening up his inventory from which he pulled out a Pepper Up potion and tossed it, feeling the remaining cold get driven out by the potion's effects. "It's over Hedwig," he told his familiar, a nervous chuckle escaping him as the adrenaline slowly left his system. "We saved her."

" _We did Harry. It's over._ "

For a moment, he sat there, staring at the pile of golden dust that had been the Dementor. He extended his hand and touched the dust,

Ping!

 **You have gained a net of 20163 Exp!**

Ping!

 **Loot transferred to Inventory!**

 **3,000£**

 **520 G**

 **Dementor's Skull - Crafting Item**

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Save Lisa and defeat the beast of the Chamber!**

 **Rewards,**

 **80,000 exp**

 **10 stat points**

 **Skill book:**

Ping!

 **You have levelled up!**

 **Harry Potter**

 **Health-1975/1975**

 **Mana-1675/1675**

 **The Gamer**

 **Title-The Boy who Lived**

 **Level-14 Exp-435990/790000**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **STR-33**

 **VIT-26(+4)=30**

 **DEX-24(+4)=28**

 **INT-41**

 **WIS-45**

 **LUC-27**

 **POINTS-43**

 **MONEY- 14025£ / 3697G 188S 56K**

 **Harry Potter is a wizard, the son of Lily Potter and James Potter. He is a new fledgling wizard at Hogwarts. He likes hanging with his new friends and divides his time between figuring out insanely complicated political manipulations and honing his unusual magical skills as the Gamer in secret. Harry loves his parents, and wants to help the world they died protecting.**

 **Status- wizard, giving Harry +4 VIT, +4 DEX and the ability to control magic, talk to snakes, control his appearance and look cool.**

"Now let's get out of here. Lisa probably needs Madam Pomfrey's help," he said as he waved the window away and pushed himself to his feet, fighting against the soreness in his bones. Walking over to where Lisa lay, Harry picked her up onto his shoulder with a humph, and Hedwig grabbed onto his other shoulder before flaming them back to the Inner Chamber in the Chamber of Secrets.

"ID Escape," he muttered, and reappeared in the inner chamber.

"Wait for a minute Hedwig," he said as he put Lisa onto the floor again, "I have to go make sure that all the Parseltongue doors are blown up so that other people can get in here."

Getting a trill of agreement, Harry headed out, at first blowing a hole in the door that led into the inner chamber, before heading out of that hole into the tunnel which led into the main Chamber.

He had barely stepped foot into the Chamber when he froze.

Something was off, and it took a terrifying second for him to realize what.

The Basilisk was gone.

But that wasn't all. Something else had changed. The saxophone medley that had been playing from the gramophone under Slytherin's statue ever since he had entered the Chamber was now no longer playing. Instead, a scathing harsh hissing sound filled the hall, echoing again and again from the giant walls.

A window popped up in the corner of his vision.

 **Parseltongue Skill Active!**

And the hissing slowly softened and flowed together into comprehensible words.

Three words, in fact, looping over and over and over again on the magical gramophone.

" _Kill them all. Kill them all. Kill them all…"_

The meaning of all this suddenly clicked in Harry's mind.

A failsafe.

Panic starting to set in, Harry rushed over to the gramophone, before immediately casting Observe on it.

 **Enchanted Unbreakable Gramophone**

 **A gramophone enchanted with a Switching charm and a targeted _Homenum Revelio_ charm to make sure that it will play Track 1 when the enchanter is nearby, and Track 2 when the enchanter is not nearby.**

 **Track 1 - Coleman Hawkins - Body & Soul**

 **Track 2 - Parseltongue recording.**

His eyes widened in panic as Gamer's Mind made the connections and he realized what this meant.

"Hedwig!" he yelled as he turned around and ran into the tunnel towards the Inner Chamber, boosting his way into the Chamber and towards limp bodies that lay on the ground, one alive and one not.

Picking up Lisa's body onto his shoulder with little effort, Harry Boosted over to Dean's body, which he picked him up onto his other shoulder. Hedwig immediately landed on his forearm, and the world around him dissolved in fire.

When he reappeared in front of the Great Hall, his first thought wasn't related to the broken Great Hall doors in front of him. Instead, it was that he hadn't realized how long he had been in the chamber for.

It had been hours. The sun was peeking in through the windows now.

He stepped into the Hall, and his insides twisted with a hundred different emotions. His head felt dizzy as he took in the sight in front of him.

Scattered all across the hall lay the lifeless forms of over half a dozen students, most of them the older Slytherins, since other houses had chosen to mostly leave for the holidays.

Up near the staff table, Professor Dumbledore knelt over the limp body of Professor Kettleburn with his wand pointed at the dead basilisk, tears running down his face. A small tendril of smoke rose from the tip of his wand, and the almost tangible smell of powerful… _destructive_ dark magic hung in the air.

The giant corpse of the sixty-foot-long ancient basilisk lay to the Slytherin side of the hall, its head blown clean off its body and its brains scattered over the Hall windows, tinting the sunlight red.

* * *

 **What an end to a chapter eh?**

 **P.S. Don't worry. Only older OWL and NEWT level students have died. Pretty much all of the younger students are fine. I'll make that clear in the next chapter in Dumbledore's POV, but if you were worried, don't be. Those worried about the tone of the story, again, don't be. This story has a fair bit of humor, but the dark undertones need to There will be serious and difficult chapters, but their purpose lies in building the plot.**

 **REVIEW!**


	35. Book-II:Hope Springs Eternal

Chapter 15:

 _THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS_

 _The last few months seemed to have been tragic for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with the numerous mysterious petrifactions reminiscent of the 1943, Gilderoy Lockhart's accident, and most tragic of them all, the massacre that happened yesterday, writes correspondent Velma Sullivan._

 _A message about the opening of the legendary Chamber of Secrets and the coming of the 'Heir of Slytherin' was the first sign, followed by the petrifaction of one Hannah Abbott mere weeks later and then followed soon after by the October 31st Halloween attacks on one Seamus Finnigan and one Justin Finch-Fletchley, leading to the removal of Albus Dumbledore from his post as the Headmaster. However, Dumbledore's removal did not do anything to deter the Heir, and the next attack happened on the January 7th, with the petrifaction of one Hermione Granger._

 _The final attack on January 8th was different however in that it did not have petrifactions. Instead, that night, the staff found a message from the Heir. The Heir had taken a child, one Lisa Turpin, right into the Chamber. The chamber which no one knew the location of. Dejected and defeated, the Hogwarts staff started to prepare to send the students home the next day._

 _But the next morning's breakfast was not to be quiet, for the Heir had made the last move. In the middle of the breakfast, the Basilisk blasted right through the front doors and barrelled into the Hall armed with its killer gaze. Official testimony states the **Secrecy Charm** that hid the Basilisk broke under the strain of having too many minds to hide the Beast from, enabling Albus Dumbledore, who was there as an invited guest speaker, to work out a solution and cast a Blindness curse on each individual in the room before ending the Basilisk with powerful magic._

 _However, he was too late, and 8 students and 1 teacher had fallen prey to the terrible gaze of the Basilisk._

 _For more on this story and official testimonies, article by Jennifer Law follows._

* * *

 _HOGWARTS MASSACRE: WHO IS TO BLAME!_

 _As the events of the night of January 8th were unfolding and the teachers, defeated, were preparing for Hogwarts closing down, one person had not assumed defeat, and that was Harry Potter._

 _Having overheard his teachers' conversation about Lisa Turpin, Harry did what no one else had done. He found the entrance to Chamber of Secrets and went in. What follows is an excerpt from his official statement to DMLE._

 ** _~~~Statement Begins~~~_**

 ** _Interrogator: How did you realize where the Entrance was located?_**

 ** _HP:_** _The only reason I realized where the Entrance was is because of Myrtle, the ghost of the girl who was killed in 1943. When I asked her how she died, her face went all blank. I'd read that only stuff like Secrecy charms could do that, so I asked where she had died, trying to get around the charm. She was able to tell me that she died in the bathroom she currently haunts. I realized that there must be some sort of connection to the Chamber from that place, so I and my phoenix Hedwig searched for anything peculiar. We found a tap with a snake engraved on it. I knocked on the wall and realized it was hollow, and I realized that the entrance must be behind it._

 ** _Interrogator: And how did you open the entrance?_**

 ** _HP:_** _I figured there would be some password to it so I just sent a blasting hex at it. The sink blew up, and there was this really big pipe behind it._

 ** _Interrogator: Why did you not alert others and what did you do next?_**

 ** _HP:_** _Since Myrtle couldn't tell me how she died, I figured that the Beast must have been covered by the Secrecy charm. I didn't want to risk anyone else's life. We went down the pipe and through the tunnel and found an open door with snakes on it. I had a family heirloom with me, so I was able to hide and slowly sneak around the sides of the Chamber, looking for Lisa. The place was really dark, dusty and looked almost destroyed. Somehow I managed to get through to the other end without encountering the Basilisk. I just wanted to save Lisa and get out of there as fast as I could._

 ** _Interrogator: That was when you reached the smaller door underneath the statue of Slytherin yes?_**

 ** _HP:_** _Yeah. It led into a tunnel, which led to a smaller room. I found the two of them lying there, along with an upended red-hot cauldron._

 ** _Interrogator: Be more specific for the record please. Them?_**

 ** _HP:_** _Dean Thomas, my friend, and Lisa Turpin lying on the floor, not moving. Lisa had burns all over her, and her robes were soaked with something that was burning her. But she was alive. I dried her up the best I could before going over to check on Dean. But he . . . he was . . ._

 ** _Interrogator: Would you like some water, Mr. Potter?_**

 ** _HP:_** _No. No. I'm fine. He…He was dead. I don't know how long I sat there for, but when I snapped out of it, I grabbed them both and got Hedwig to take us to the Great Hall. There I just remember seeing the carnage, and then I passed out._

 ** _Interrogator: That will be all. Thank you_**

 ** _~~~Statement Ends~~~_**

 _DMLE investigation so far corroborates this version of events. The Chamber was indeed almost destroyed, although by what is not clear. A gramophone, set to spew mysterious spitting noises was found in the chamber as well. Its purpose is yet to be discovered. The cauldron mentioned, however, has been suspected of containing a dark empowering potion, and it is suspected that the burns on Miss Turpin's body occurred because she was somehow dipped into the potion. She is now seeking treatment at St Mungo's Hospital for Magical Maladies and Injuries._

 _Current DMLE theory says that Dean Thomas might have somehow followed the Heir into the Chamber as Lisa Turpin was being kidnapped, and when he noticed Miss Turpin being thrown into the potion, he tackled it and saved her life, stopping the dark ritual from occurring. The current running theory is that this might have what caused a magical backlash causing the damage to the Chamber._

 _So who did it? Who was behind all this? Whatever the truth, you can expect Daily Prophet to bring it to your knowledge as soon as possible._

* * *

 _HOGWARTS CLOSING DOWN!_

 _Yesterday, on the 10th of January, the day after the Massacre at Hogwarts and all the alive and well students returning home, Headmistress Minerva McGonagall addressed the press from the gates of an empty Hogwarts._

" _In the light of recent events, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will be closing down for the upcoming school year. We shall be improving our security, faculty, protections, and many other important fields of our ancient school. Due to his experience in magical protections and his actions in protecting the students of Hogwarts Albus Dumbledore will soon be reinstated as the Headmaster of Hogwarts to oversee these renovations. Hogwarts is not just a school, but a monument to the Wizarding World's strength and tenacity in face of peril. We solemnly swear that we will return it to the greatness it deserves."_

 _While the impassioned speech was much appreciated by the crowd gathered to listen, the implications that the statement had were disturbing._

 _If Hogwarts chooses to close down for the next year, then more than likely the entire school year will be lost for the students studying here. Murmurs from the Department of Magical Education suggest that the students may be transferred to another school for the year of 1993, with their expenses for books, uniforms and assorted requirements paid in full for that year provided that the students choose to remain affiliated with Hogwarts, even in their transfer school._

 _It is fairly obvious that this is an effort to not lose the remaining Hogwarts students to a foreign school while they are transferred there. But how successful will this be? While no doubt many students will return for their fourth year at school, just for the sake of being closer to home, some have already permanently transferred to other schools. The wounds have been made, and they won't be easy to fill in._

 _The promises of improving the faculty and security were much appreciated. One does have to question the competency of the staff when a twelve-year-old boy sees patterns that none of them were able to see. Hopefully, with the reopening of Hogwarts once more under Dumbledore, we will be seeing a more trained and professional staff armed with better security measures._

 _But as the future seems bleak for Hogwarts and its students, one ray of sunshine shines through in the form of the soon forthcoming recovery of the petrified individuals. We here at the Daily Prophet wish them and Hogwarts school the very best for the future._

* * *

Those three articles adorned the first page of the January 10th newspaper sitting on top of Harry's desk. The newspaper was four days old, having come out a couple of days after the…the incident, as Harry preferred to call it in his head now. A few feet away from the table, Harry stood in front of his open wardrobe.

He considered the occasion for a second before pulling out one of his nicer set of robes before tossing them onto his bed behind him.

Closing the wardrobe doors behind him, he turned around and quickly threw the robes on, using the new skill he had learned from his skill book to weave on an illusion, making him look clean not like he had just rolled in a bale of hay with elephant poop mixed in for good measure.

 **Glamouring, Lv- 1 (0%)**

 **Allows the user to weave illusions around himself and alter the look of small portions of his body.**

 **You can only make yourself look fresh at the current level of this ability.**

 **Cost- 50 MP**

That was one useful skill when in a hurry. Plus it had a lot of potential to grow into something more powerful and useful. But for now, he needed to make sure he looked decent.

Today was an important day. Today was the day Hermione was going to wake up.

"Are you sure you don't want to come, Hedwig?" he asked his phoenix, who was sitting in the little tray underneath her perch reserved for her post-Burning Day form.

" _You know I can't,_ " Hedwig's childlike mental voice echoed in his mind, sounding slightly miserable, " _I can't go out like this. I look hideous!_ "

Harry turned from patting down his robes to look at his friend. Phoenixes, he'd learned the day of Hedwig's burning day yesterday, had quite a few body image issues about the way they looked after their Burning Days. It shouldn't have been a surprise really, considering how much pride Hedwig held in her plumage, but hearing it verbalized made a whole world of difference.

"You look better than you did yesterday," he told her with a smile, "Yesterday was bad."

" _Thanks, Harry,_ "

"As in, really bad."

" _No really. Thank you._ "

"You looked tiny yesterday," he continued with a smirk, "Like a mix between a fist-sized shriveled bean and a chicken."

" _Really grateful for the confidence boost Harry. Appreciate that._ " she flatly said before going back to pecking at the piece of chocolate in the little bowl on her tray.

 _And_ she appreciated sarcasm, which was frankly great in Harry's opinion. Made for good banter.

"No problem," he said before walking over to her, extending an arm to scratch behind her neck, watching with a grin as her eyes slid shut and her tiny leg started twitching.

"Are you coming, Harry!?" Nicholas's voice rang loudly from downstairs.

"Coming!" Harry yelled back before he gave Hedwig a final pat on the head and walked over to the newspaper sitting on his desk before picking it up and looking at it. The words he had almost committed to memory sprang right back at him, mesmerizing him into a trance as he unblinkingly stared at them.

" _Tell Hermione that I sent my good wishes,_ " Hedwig said from her perch, startling Harry out of his thrall. His hand hastily jerked against the edge of the paper, slitting open a small cut in his palm.

"I will," Harry said, ignoring the cut as he hastily stuffed the paper into his pocket before heading towards the door.

" _You aren't going to heal that are you?_ " Hedwig quietly said from behind him as he reached for the doorknob.

He stopped. It had been almost a week now. An entire week of him blaming himself for each one of those deaths that had happened at Hogwarts that day. Wondering if his killing one girl would have saved all those other lives. Wondering if he had _sacrificed_ 9 people in exchange for his moral integrity and a girl whose life was destroyed anyway. Trying to tell himself again and again that he made the right choice at the moment.

He was just tired of thinking at this point.

Not thinking about all that and just focusing on trying to save and protect what he had left just felt like the right thing to do.

He looked at his hand. Hundreds of tiny cuts were peppered all across his arms and his back from the rocks falling on him in the tunnel outside Slytherin's cave. This new red one, the paper cut, stood out brightly amongst all the ones that had scabbed over. Every single one of those cuts he could have healed.

But he didn't.

Maybe it was stupid. In fact, it probably was. But it felt like the right thing to do. As meaningless it was, this _pathetic_ little form of penance that he had taken upon himself, it felt like the right thing to do.

"It's just a little cut. Nothing really. I'll see you later." he said before opening the door and leaving.

* * *

"How far is the Hospital from here?" Harry asked Nicholas as they stepped out of the alley they had apparated to from home into a broad store-lined street. All the petrified victims had been transferred to St Mungo's Hospital the day Hogwarts had closed down.

"Not far. We're just around the corner," Nicholas said, parting a group of shoppers to make way for them to pass before adding, "I will be waiting outside the building. There's a nice tea shop across the street. You take as much time as you need."

"Here we go," he added a moment later. It was a large, old-fashioned, red brick department store called Purge & Dowse Ltd. The place had a miserable air. The window displays consisted of a few chipped dummies with their wigs askew, and large signs on all the dusty doors read: 'Closed for Refurbishment'.

"It's the glass window. Be ready to step through when I tell you to," he said, pointing towards a window displaying nothing but a particularly ugly female dummy. Its false eyelashes were hanging off and it was modeling a green nylon pinafore dress.

Harry nodded, and Nicholas leaned closer to the glass before saying, "We're here to see Hermione Granger."

Harry really shouldn't have been surprised by the dummy giving a nod, but he was nevertheless. However, he remembered his instructions and stepped through the glass. It felt like stepping through a thin waterfall as he emerged quite warm and dry on the other side.

There was no sign of the ugly dummy or the space where she had stood. Instead, St. Mungo's Hospital's reception area stood in full glory in front of him. Rows of witches and wizards sat upon wooden chairs, some looking perfectly normal and others sporting gruesome disfigurements such as elephant trunks or extra hands sticking out of their chests. Healers in lime-green robes were walking up and down the rows, asking questions and making notes on clipboards. Harry noticed the emblem embroidered on their chests: a wand and bone, crossed.

Harry walked over to the queue in front of a sickly thin witch seated at a desk marked Enquiries. The wall behind her was covered in notices and posters. There was also a large portrait of a witch with long silver ringlets which was labeled:

 _Dilys Derwent_

 _St Mungo's Healer 1722-1741_

 _Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_

 _1741-1768_

Dilys was eyeing Harry closely, and Harry knew that it was because another portrait of hers hung in the Headmaster's office at Hogwarts, where he had been a few times.

"Next!" the blonde witch said, snapping Harry's attention back. He was up next."

"Hello," he said, "I'm here to see Hermione Granger. Could you tell me where I can find her?"

"Hermione Granger?" said the witch, not looking at him as she ran her finger down a long list. "Yes, first floor, third door on the right, La'am Djimple Ward."

"Thank you," said Harry, glad to not have drawn any attention.

For good measure, he dropped into Sneak mode to make sure he wouldn't be recognized as he entered the double doors and walked through the narrow corridor beyond which was lit by crystal bubbles full of candles that floated up on the ceiling, looking like giant soapsuds.

He climbed a flight of stairs, following the arrows and entered the Creature-Induced Injuries corridor, which was crowded with family of the petrified students. He recognized the Amelia Bones waiting alongside the Abbotts and a sobbing Susan. Not wanting to draw attention to himself at all, he turned to the second door on the right, dropped out of Sneak mode, and read the sign.

 _La'am Djimple Ward: Mysterious Maladies_.

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up due to successful use!**

 **Sneaking, Lv-17(21%)**

 **Allows you to sneak up on someone.**

 **71% chance of not getting caught.**

 **71% chance of critical strike.**

Harry waved the window away and knocked.

The door opened to reveal the familiar brown-haired woman whom he had met at Dean's birthday all those months ago. Mrs. Granger's eyes were wet. She gave him a smile before wiping her tears away.

"Hello, Harry. Come right in. Ronald has already arrived and they were waiting for you. I was just about to head upstairs to get something to eat."

"Thank you, Mrs. Granger," Harry said as the woman let him in before heading out of the door herself, closing the door behind her.

The ward was small and rather dingy, as the only window was narrow and set high in the wall facing the door. Most of the light came from more shining crystal bubbles clustered in the middle of the ceiling. All four of the petrified students were there, lying on beds, but only one of them was awake.

Hermione occupied the bed at the far end of the ward beside the tiny window. Harry was pleased to see that she was propped up on several pillows and was talking to Ron, who was sitting on a stool beside her bed. The tears streaming down her face, however, meant that she had heard about what had happened.

They looked up as he walked towards him and, seeing who it was, Hermione wiped her tears and gave a shaky smile.

"Hello Harry," she said as Harry bent down and hugged her before taking a seat on a stool on the opposite side of the bed to him.

"How are you?" Harry asked with concern.

"I'm alright," she said, "Just a bit weak. The Healers think they'll have me out in a day at most, which is pretty fast."

"They're just afraid of your mum and dad and their muggle healer ways," Ron chimed in, making the girl chuckle.

Harry looked at Ron for a second. The last he had seen him, the redhead had been an inconsolable mess. The time with his family must have been helpful.

"Have you told her all about what happened Ron?" he asked.

Ron nodded, "Most of it."

Harry dipped a hand into his pocket, pulling out the newspaper he'd grabbed from his desk and handing it to Hermione. "The first three articles cover pretty much all of it. Just in case Ron missed anything."

Ron nodded his thanks. This was clearly painful for him, talking about the Incident. Harry took a moment to admire the boy's strength. He was closer to Dean than any in their group, being in the same house as him. No doubt he was still in pain, yet despite not having any Gamer's Mind to protect himself from his emotions, here he was, stoically trying to support his friend.

His respect for Ron grew quite a bit.

"Oh no…" Hermione muttered as she read through the articles, "Oh goodness no."

The newspaper soon slipped from her hands as she stared uncomprehendingly ahead. Slowly, as Harry and Ron watched worriedly, her shoulders started to rock in sobs. Soon, the tears that had stopped when he had come in started to fall again.

Harry moved from his stool onto the edge of the bed and pulled her to his arms, grabbing her in a hug.

"He-" she cried into his chest in between hiccups, "He didn't deserve it. He was the nicest person. Why…"

And they sat there, Harry gently patting Hermione's back and Ron holding her hand as she cried her heart out to them.

It was in moments like this that Harry was glad he hadn't told anyone the truth. Voldemort was right. Death without a purpose hurt. So he'd _given_ Dean's death a purpose. Dean died saving someone's life. He died stopping a dark ritual. As far as the rest of the world was concerned, he died for a noble purpose.

Ping!

 **Due to finishing the execution of a justified lie, a skill has levelled up!**

 **Lying, Lv- 12 (30%)**

 **This is your ability to lie to people, the higher the level the better the lie and less chance of discovery!**

 **65% chance of success, less based on how extreme the lie is.**

It was quite some time before Hermione's sobs ceased and turned into the occasional hiccup, before melding into silence.

It was Ron who spoke first, "So it's just us now huh?"

"Yeah," Harry replied, trying to keep the melancholy out of his voice. They fell back into silence again.

A few minutes later, Hermione, in an attempt to make conversation, asked, "Will we still be doing the Project?"

"I…don't know." Harry honestly replied.

"It'll be weird without…you know." Ron said.

"Yeah. It will," Harry sighed, "I don't know really. I think I'll visit the school and talk to Professor Vector sometime soon, but until then, I don't know."

"Did Terry write?" Hermione asked, changing the subject.

"Hmm?" Harry asked, before the question hit him and he replied, "Oh yeah. At school, he used to write a lot asking about how you were doing and all that. Last I heard, he told me that he was going to be living in France for a few months with his uncle to learn French before his term at Beauxbatons. I haven't heard from him after the Incident though. Haven't really had the chance to write either."

Harry frowned. Ron had frozen as soon as Terry's name was mentioned.

"He misses us you know," he said, just as much to Ron as to Hermione. The resentment Ron was harboring towards Terry for something that wasn't even his fault didn't sit well with Harry.

"Things will be different now," Ron replied, his tone lined with chill, "Really different. He's going to go to school in France and with Hogwarts being closed, we have no idea what's going to be happening to us."

Hermione glanced at Harry, her expression one of worried concern, before she asked, "The newspaper said you got Dean's…his body out of the Chamber. What happened to him after that?"

"Dad said that the DMLE is holding him for the investigation period," Ron piped in.

"Shouldn't he be released to his family?" Hermione asked, "They must be in so much pain."

"That's what I said. Dad told me the DMLE is afraid that if she wants to cremate then they might lose evidence permanently. Or at least that's the official reason,"

"It sounds reasonable. I guess," Hermione muttered.

"When will you be released?" Harry asked Hermione.

"They're running a few tests on me to make sure that the Mandrake worked as it should have, but they think I'll be out by tomorrow," Hermione replied as she picked up the newspaper and looked at it again.

"This says that we'll be transferred to a new school. Do you have any idea where?" she asked with a curious frown.

"It's not really official yet is it? But if we're given a choice then I'll choose Beauxbatons. Nick and Ellie have land in France." Harry replied.

"I think I'll do the same. Plus we have someone we know there. It'll be easier to fit in." Hermione said musingly, before asking, "And you Ron?"

"Same I suppose. It's closest to home," he said grudgingly, before looking at his wristwatch. He hesitantly added, "It's been over an hour. Mum must be waiting for me outside. I can tell her to come later if you want me to stay."

"Oh no, its fine," Hermione assured, "Go. I'll see you later,"

Ron gave a nod, before standing up and turning to Harry, "It was good seeing you again. Floo over to the Burrow sometime."

"I will Ron."

And with that, Ron left, leaving Harry and Hermione alone. Harry leaned back into the chair, closing his eyes. He knew what was coming.

"You saw it didn't you," he heard Hermione say.

"That newspaper article you had in your hand? I did," he replied, not opening his eyes.

"You're not angry?" she asked after a pause.

"No. A bit disappointed, a bit sad, but not angry." And much to his own relief, he knew that it was the truth. A year ago he would have flipped at this. But he had grown. He had changed. In light of all that had happened…being angry over this seemed trivial and not worth it at all.

Ping!

 **Due to self-reflection and understanding, take +1 Wis!**

The silence after his reply lasted a few minutes.

"Why?"

Harry opened his eyes and looked into hers with a half-baked smile, "Because you made a mistake. A justified mistake. Then I forgave you for it…because I can't lose another one of my friends."

She did not say anything for the longest while, instead staring at him with an odd mixture of pity and wonder on her face, before leaning over and grabbing him in a hug.

"Thank you," she whispered.

"Anytime Hermione," he said, patting her back, "Anytime."

After that, they spent time talking about everything and nothing, enjoying each other's company for a while. Mrs. Granger brought them some food from the cafeteria above, and before he knew it, another hour had passed. He had to take his leave, promising to come visit soon.

He walked out of that room feeling lighter than he had in the last week. Jogging down the stairs, he headed out of the hospital through the glass window, walking straight across the road to the indoor tea shop across the street in which Nicholas was waiting for him.

A soft chime rang through the wood-paneled walls of the quaint little shop as Harry opened the door and walked in, locating Nicholas reading a magazine on a table by the corner. He walked over and slid into the chair in front of him.

"Did you enjoy your tea old man?" he asked.

Nicholas put down his magazine and peered at his face for a second before smiling. "I did. I'm glad you are feeling better."

Harry didn't know how to respond to that. He'd been careful not to worry his guardians too much, so the fact that Nicholas had noticed his unrest was…disconcerting. And so he simply nodded in response.

Soon, Nicholas finished his cup of tea and they paid for it before heading back out into the cold air of the crowded street outside. They walked for a bit, talking about things of no real importance, like why St. Mungo's was founded in a busy Muggle street and whether this tea shop was better than the one in Diagon, before they found an out of sight alley and ducked into it.

Harry grabbed onto the offered arm before the duo twisted out of existence, smoothly and silently apparating to the front door of their apartment.

Finding his footing, Harry let go of Nicholas's arm and knocked on the door. The lock clicked open, and Harry turned the doorknob, leading Nicholas into the apartment.

He had barely locked the door behind him, when much to his surprise, he heard Nicholas ask, "Albus? What are you doing here?"

And sure enough, it was Dumbledore, sitting on the living room sofa across from Perenelle. The old Headmaster turned and looked at them just as Harry noticed that Perenelle was staring at a paper in her hands with a horrified expression.

"I'm sorry to intrude Nicholas, but a rather disturbing turn of events has happened. Lisa Turpin has been arrested and is set to stand trial in front of Wizengamot. I need Harry's help to protect her."

* * *

One thing of note about this entire situation was that Harry had 3 versions of the happenings in the Chamber of Secrets.

1) The version he had told to the press, in which he had done nothing but lie.

2) The version he had told the Flamels and Dumbledore, which included pretty much everything except the part where he went into the ID to save Lisa. Much like how he had told the newspaper, he'd told them that the potion was already upturned by the time he got there, but he did tell them about his battle with the Basilisk. It helped that they already knew about his Wandless magic capabilities.

3) And the truth.

Lie, Bullshit, and Truth.

It would have been funny if it hadn't been so grim.

"You said that Riddle used an illusion to taunt you, then you took down the Basilisk using Alchemy. Then you went into the small tunnel under Salazar Slytherin's statue, and found the upturned cauldron and young Mr. Thomas lying there with a badly burnt Miss Turpin. After that, you grabbed them and got them back to the Great Hall. During any of this, did you notice an object? A diary? Something like the one Mr. Riddle mentioned was his 'container'? Are you _absolutely_ sure?" Dumbledore asked for the third time in a row.

"No, I didn't. And yes I'm very sure. I would have noticed if anything was there," Harry firmly replied. He'd been looking for the 'container' from the moment Riddle had mentioned it in the chamber, and he'd found nothing.

Dumbledore and Nicholas shared another meaningful glance, just like they had been sharing since Dumbledore had mentioned the 'container'. Harry suspected that they knew something that he didn't.

"What is going on Professor?" he asked, growing impatient, "Why would they arrest Lisa? Didn't I make it clear in my statement to DMLE that she was the victim? That she was the one being hurt?"

"You did Harry," Dumbledore agreed warily, "However, it appears that the Grand Prosecutor has gained some sort of evidence that warranted a trial against Miss Turpin. A trial in front of Wizengamot with the charges being of murder, grievous injury, terrorism, and many more."

"She could get Dementor's Kiss if she gets convicted on even half of those charges," Perenelle muttered, looking stricken.

"Should I tell them? That she was possessed by Voldemort?" Harry asked, looking around worriedly.

Dumbledore sighed, taking off his glasses as he rubbed his eyes, "Harry, there were reasons I asked you to lie to the press. I told you not to tell the press about how you took down the Basilisk because even minor scrutiny on your methods could have exposed Nicholas. I told you to not tell them about Miss Turpin's possession because no one would believe you."

"You're _joking_ ," Harry muttered. He couldn't be serious. They wouldn't _believe_ him?!

"You didn't see anything conclusive Harry. All you saw was an illusion. They have every reason to not believe you." Nicholas pointed out.

"Then why are _you_ believing me?" Harry asked, turning to Dumbledore.

"Because the things you said that the illusion told you," replied Dumbledore, "You would not have known any other way. You heard things that only I and Lord Voldemort know. That is why I believe you. And that is why no one else will."

"But surely if you tell them-"

"Even if I do that, my word will not count for much at this point." Dumbledore said, "The amount of deaths that happened is making a lot of the families call for an investigation and trial. Therein lies the problem. There is little to no evidence protecting Miss Turpin in a trial. All there is, is your word. They have substituted me as the Chief Warlock until the case is over, claiming bias. Furthermore, I am going to be arguing for her in court, and that will render my testimony useless."

"But…" Harry said desperately, "Isn't there any symptom of her being possessed that we could show in the trial? Like Quirrell had a face behind his head? We won't have to tell anyone that Voldemort was involved at all. Just say that it was a malicious spirit or something."

"Hmm…" Dumbledore leaned back into his chair as he considered what Harry said, "A defense suggesting possession is possible, but the lack of any actual physical evidence makes me wary. And in answer to your question, no. She does not have any evidence of possession, more than likely because of who she was possessed by."

"What do you mean?"

"Lord Voldemort is well versed in the Dark Arts, and with as much time as he had as a student, he must have put Miss Turpin through some ritual or the other to make sure she did not show any evidence of possession."

This was starting to sound worse and worse.

"Making the situation even worse is that the entire ordeal ended up harming her in more ways than one. They won't be able to use Veritaserum on her, and they won't be able to have the Court Legilimencer interrogate her. I visited her in her Ministry cell today. Her mind was rendered impenetrable. Her magic…damaged. " Dumbledore gave a pained grimace as he said the last word.

"Damaged…like _she_ was?" Perenelle asked, her tone full of a morbid curiosity.

Dumbledore nodded tiredly, resting his head in his hands.

Harry was confusedly looked back and forth between Dumbledore and the Flamels, whose expressions seemed to be stuck between pity and sorrow.

"Are you alright, Albus?" Nicholas asked gently, resting a hand on the aged man's arm.

Dumbledore nodded before looking up from his hands to Harry. "They will be starting the Trial within the next couple of days, and I will need your assistance more than anything, both inside the courtroom and outside. Can I count on it, Harry?"

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Help Dumbledore save Lisa's life!**

 **Reward,**

 **50,000 Exp**

 **?**

 **?**

 **Failure,**

 **Death of Lisa Turpin**

 **YES/NO?**

He had to accept this quest, and not just because of Lisa, but also for himself. He couldn't let Lisa Turpin die. Not when him saving her life had inadvertently resulted in the deaths of nine other people. Her life was worth _more_ now. More than ever before.

She had to live.

With determination, Harry pressed yes, before saying to Dumbledore. "What do you need me to do?"

* * *

Four days before the day the Petrified victims woke up, in the warm confines of his manor's study, Wentworth Wright was looking through the same newspaper that Harry would be reading in the future, calculating and recalculating the possible fallout from the massacre happening as he sipped on his Darjeeling tea.

The severe blow to Dumbledore's power was obvious and imminent. Even if the old headmaster spun it the right way, it would significantly decrease his tout in the political community. He would most likely never be able to run for public office again.

The boy on the other hand…

He took another sip of his tea, before putting it down on the table beside his armchair and turning the page to look at the small blurry photo of the boy in question. The photo looked like it had been snapped in a hurry Harry Potter was turning out to be quite the unexpected force here. Not even thirteen yet, and he had a foot on every side of the camp, being at least casual acquaintances with Lucius Malfoy, Dumbledore, the Minister and even Bones herself. And now, with even more public goodwill on his side after this entire debacle, the boy was politically untouchable.

He had always been firmly entrenched in the Neutrals in the Wizengamot, leaning more towards Traditionalists, but seeing this rise to power in action was making him seriously consider choosing a side.

A small pop behind him distracted him from his thoughts. He turned to look at the house elf that had popped into the study.

"Tibby is sorry to disturb Master sir, but the goblins have Floo called from Gringotts are insisting on meeting Master.." the little creature stuttered out.

He nodded, and the elf popped away. Folding the newspaper up and putting it into a pocket, he stood up and headed out of the study towards the living room where the fireplace was located. The goblins had never contacted him before, and them using the Floo was almost unheard of, so this must have been quite the emergency.

Entering the living room, he headed straight for the fireplace, where the hook-nosed face of a Gringotts goblin waited impatiently in the embers. Its eyes widened when it noticed him, and it promptly started speaking.

"Are you one Wentworth Alan Wright, primary and only holder of the Wright Gringotts Premium Vault?"

Wentworth's grey brows pushed together in a frown. This sounded like some official business. "I am," he replied, "Can I help you?"

The goblin ignored his question, instead of asking, "Have you ever had any contact with one Dean Thomas or his immediate family?"

'Dean Thomas?' he thought curiously, wondering what was going on. "No. I have not."

The goblin's head disappeared for a minute before it reappeared. "You might want to step through Mr. Wright. There has been an interesting development that might be of concern to you. If you would just step through the Floo."

"This is _highly_ irregula-"

"It is about your son." the goblin interrupted, striking him silent. His son…John had been dead for over twelve years now.

It took him a moment to recover, but when he did, there was only one thing to do. "I'm coming through."

The goblin gave a sharp nod before his head disappeared from the fire. He stepped into the green fire, and with a burst of flame, was flung through the Floo Network to the Gringotts floo that he had been called from.

Stepping out into what appeared to be a small sparsely furnished office, he dusted off his robes. The door leading out was closed, and the goblin that had called him was sitting on a tall chair at the table in the center of the room, looking through a folder. With a wave of its hand, it invited him to sit in the guest chair across him.

"What is this about?" he asked as he took his seat.

The goblin put down the folder and looked at him.

"When a Muggleborn student dies in the magical world," it said out of the blue, "the Ministry registers the death and then contacts Gringotts, supplying us with a small vial of blood of the deceased as proof of death. This is done since Muggles cannot own a Gringotts Vault, and as such, the contents of the student's vault would need to be emptied and handed over to the Muggleborn's family."

"And how does that pertain to my situation?" he asked.

"Greatly. The same procedure was followed for the death of Dean Thomas after he died at Hogwarts. We received a vial of his blood from the Ministry and ran the blood through our Vault Register as part of the protocol. For a Muggleborn, that search would only show one match, which would usually just be a Student Vault. Dean Thomas's blood showed two. One his Student Vault, and the other a PremiumVault. _Your_ Premium Vault."

"That is impossible!" he said, a sinking feeling settling into his stomach. And even as he rebutted the goblin's words, his own mind brought up thoughts to the contrary.

 _'There was no body.'_

"That is what we thought at first, especially since your only known heir had been declared dead. However, when we made contact with our DMLE contacts, a piece of evidence that the DMLE had just acquired erased all doubt."

The goblin opened its folder and pulled the first of the stack of papers inside before handing it to him. He took it from the creature before looking at it. The first few lines by themselves shocked him frozen.

 _Dearest Son,_

 _This letter would have found you only if I were no longer alive. And if I am indeed dead, I do not wish to die without you ever knowing about me. So let me introduce myself. My name is Johnathon Armin Wright. I am your father._

Feelings of hurt, sorrow, betrayal, and anger filled him as he read through the letter. By the time he had finished it, his entire world turned upside. For over a decade now, he had believed that his son was dead. His wife had died from the shock, and his entire existence had turned into a lifeless nightmare. But all this time, his son had been alive. Turned into a beast yes, but still alive. Oh if only he had returned…

No…

He couldn't continue that line of thought. He knew himself too well for that. If his son would have returned a werewolf and with a half-blood son back then, he would not have taken well to that. He used to be too much of an idealist.

But time had made a different man out of him.

Turning to the goblin, trying to not let any tears escape, he asked, "Is that the only letter?"

The goblin opened the folder before handing him the remaining papers. "They are all addressed to his son, your grandson. I took the liberty of making the letters disappear from the DMLE's record and subtracting a nominal fee from your vault. You are holding the only copies of those letters now."

He pocketed the letters. He couldn't read them now. He had business to do. It was good that the goblin had removed the letters from the record. Gringotts goblins had their contacts, and making such things disappear from records was no new thing for them. The 'nominal' fee would no doubt be quite the dent in his pockets.

"Transfer fifteen thousand galleons from my vault to the child's vault before you convert it to muggle money and hand it to his family. Tell them he had won a scholarship or something," he said. The goblin nodded. His grandson's family would never want for anything again. "And I want to see him. My grandson. I want to see him."

"That is impossible I'm afraid Mr. Wright. The body is in DMLE custody as of this moment. It would be nearly impos-"

"You heard me goblin," he flatly said.

The goblin stared long and hard at his face, before saying, "You'll have to be discreet. And it won't be cheap."

He stared right back. "Did I flinch?"

"Very well then," The goblin said before it hopped off its chair and headed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

It was a full twenty minutes before it returned, this time not bothering to sit

"I've had our contact smuggle his body into a discreet room with a fireplace. You will have five minutes alone in there, and you will have to Floo back before that time is up. We do not want our contacts to see our clients or vice versa, so the contact will be waiting outside. Knock the door once before you Floo back."

"What is the Floo address?" he asked, getting up from his chair.

"Wizengamot Office 39"

He promptly turned around, not saying anything more as he grabbed Floo powder from the pot on the mantelpiece, threw it into the fire and stepped in, muttering the address under his breath.

The green blaze engulfed him once more, spitting him out into a familiar looking room. It was an unused Wizengamot office, presumably belonging to some now extinct family. The chairs and the desk had collected dust for quite a while now.

But all that was in the back of his mind. The only thing his eyes were focused on was the gown-clad body on the wheeled stretcher that stood in the middle of the room.

His legs walked as if involuntarily as he took in the face of his grandson. His blood. His heir.

He hadn't seen any similarities when he had glanced at his picture in the newspaper, most probably because he wasn't looking for them. But now, the resemblance was starting to become obvious. Johnny's nose and cheekbones were prominent in that forever stilled face. He stood there for how long he did not know, memorizing everything he could about the family he would never know.

It was only when an urgent knock sounded at the door that he realized that his time was up.

He looked at the body for one last time before he pulled out the newspaper he'd put in his pocket and looked at the face plastered on the front page. A sudden wave of burning hatred took over him, and he crumpled the paper up and threw it into the fireplace that lit the room. Turning to the body of his grandson, he ran a hand through the boy's hair.

"Your killer will pay. I promise you that much," he said, before he wiped his eyes of their tears, walked over to the door to knock on it once before quickly entering the Floo and headed back in a blaze of fire.

The magical picture of Lisa Turpin, motile as all magical pictures were, tried in vain to save itself as the newspaper burnt to ashes.

* * *

 **What did you think of the chapter?**

 **I really wanted to portray Harry's grief in subtler ways rather than have him overtly mope about it. He's quite rational, and would never resort to self-harm, but letting himself heal like a normal person is just barely rationalizable as 'no harm done', which is why I felt that it fit Harry.** **He'll work through it in the next couple of chapters, so that'll be an interesting write.**

 **And the Wright family saga lives on through Wentworth Wright and his behind the scenes vengeance against Lisa. Let me know what you thought of it.**


	36. Book-II:The Greater Good

Chapter 16:

He was about an hour early for his meeting with Dumbledore, Harry thought as he emerged from the Floo in Professor McGonagall's office the next day.

The office was empty, he realized as he looked around. The Transfiguration Professor was probably busy dealing with the numerous Aurors that were no doubt swarming the place, looking through anything and everything in sight. Walking over to the oaken door leading out of the office, Harry opened it and slipped outside into the corridor.

It had never really hit him that he wouldn't be seeing these hallways again for a year, Harry thought as he walked towards the Headmaster's office. He hadn't expected that it would affect him as much as it was.

But he should have. It was his home after all.

Turning a corner on the way to the Grand Staircase, Harry suddenly came to a halt. McGonagall and a burly Auror were loudly arguing in the middle of the hallway. Neither of them seemed to have noticed him yet.

Harry backtracked to a spot just behind the corner, pulling out and putting on his Invisibility Cloak before leaning over to spy on the conversation. The Auror was tapping his wand on the lock on a nearby door as McGonagall was trying vainly to talk him out of doing it.

"Entering the seventh year Alchemy classroom without the Headmaster's permission or assistance is _very_ dangerous Mr. Murphy." McGonagall argued.

"That's _Auror_ Murphy to you," the Auror interrupted gruffly.

Harry frowned.

A flush crept up the Professor's face before she replied, "Very well then _Auror_ Murphy. There are several dangerous alchemical concoctions in that room, and the Headmaster is the only one sufficiently trained in Alchemy in this school. If he does not supervise you going into that room, then your life might be at ri-"

"Don't teach me how to do my job woman," the burly Auror; Murphy; snapped at her, "If you had done yours right then maybe all those kids wouldn't have died."

Harry's eyes widened as he almost gasped.

The color drained out of McGonagall's face. She gritted her teeth, visibly trying to restrain herself, before she angrily stomped away from the conversation. Harry pushed himself up against the side as she passed him, trying to remain unnoticed as he watched her wipe her eyes on her sleeves before striding off towards her office.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert**

 **How about you stop moping about your life for a minute and teach that twerp a lesson for messing with our dear Professor? Cunt!**

 **Reward,**

 **1,000 Exp**

 **Failure,**

 **What are you expecting? Death? Here's what's gonna happen. At worst temporary detention by the Auror, because seriously. You're fucking Harry Potter. Do what you need to.**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry grinned before accepting the quest and waving away the windows. It had been a while since the game had shown its personality overtly. It was nice to have the familiar sarcastic tone back again.

And while he had no doubt that the esteemed Professor could easily take care of herself, she seemed to be unwilling to act in retribution against Auror Dickhead over there. Due to that, as a loyal student himself, it only made sense to act in her stead.

Besides, what else was he supposed to do with an entire hour of free time?

Harry opened up his inventory and pulled out a dungbomb that Ron had given him for his birthday last year. But he wasn't just going to throw them at the Auror.

Oh no. That was for plebs.

A dungbomb usually consisted of three layers inside it. The first layer was the dried potion, that when touched by fire would immediately turn into the stenchful gas. The second layer was a small bunch of gunpowder, primed to explode and light the stench potion. The third was the fuse, which proceeded through a hole all the way out of the bomb's shell, and needed to be lit by the prankster.

Pulling out a knife, Harry gently cut the dungbomb horizontally in half from the middle, exposing the insides of the popular prank item. Removing all the gunpowder from inside, Harry removed the fuse and sealed it back shut.

What remained was a ball with a single hole in it, full of a potion that'd spit out a mind famboozlingly disgusting smelling gas at the slightest spark.

The next step was to knock the man out, but that was easier said than done. Harry knew Stupefy, but there was no way that a trained Auror wouldn't dodge that or just fling it right back at him.

Instead, he opted to extend a thick tendril of his mana into the body of the Auror who was trying to get through the lock on the Alchemy classroom. Fighting heavily against the man's own magic, he pushed his mana into his blood. Letting the mana settle in and saturate his blood, Harry closed his hand into a fist, slowing down the flow of blood as much as he could with a grown man's magical flow fighting against him.

It was almost stupid how hard it was to even make the man dizzy. The more someone seemed to be trained in their use of magic, the harder it was to control their blood.

Ping!

 **For making an accurate deduction, take +1 to Int!**

The Auror stumbled upon his feet, swaying as the symptoms of low blood pressure started to take hold, dizzily shaking his head. And Harry didn't waste any time in pulling his wand out and sending a Stupefy right at him, catching him off guard.

And down he went.

Harry secured his Invisibility Cloak around him and ran over, dropping to his knees as he pried open the Auror's mouth and positioned the dungbomb at his lips, with the hole facing into his mouth.

With a snap of his fingers, he lit a single spark inside the ball, lighting up the potion. Within seconds, the entire dry potion sublimated into its smelly gaseous form. Since there was no gunpowder to explode the dungbomb's shell away, the gas went the only way it could.

Forcefully out through the hole, into Auror Murphy's mouth, and right into his digestive tract.

Harry kneeled there for a minute, holding the dungbomb in the man's mouth and idly wondering when would be an ideal time to stop.

"FTWEEEEEEEE!" echoed a fart through the empty hallway.

Harry burst out in a fit of hysterical laughter. It was so immature, but he hadn't laughed in so long that he almost couldn't stop himself.

Yup. That would be a decent enough time to stop.

He pulling the dungbomb back and dropped it into his inventory before it spewed any gas onto him, before making sure that the 'Unconscious' status effect would wear off soon with a quick Observe. Then, he pointed his wand at the man.

" _Anapneo_ " he cast, clearing the man's lung airway and making sure he wouldn't choke or something.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **How about you stop moping about your life for a minute and teach that twerp a lesson for messing with our dear Professor? Cunt!**

 **Reward,**

 **1,000 Exp**

Casting a sticking charm onto the man's butt just for good measure, sticking it to the floor, Harry got up onto his feet and headed up towards the Grand Staircase.

No doubt the entire thing was quite irresponsible, immature, and reckless, but it was also quite fun, and honestly, Harry had been feeling a bit drained of fun lately.

* * *

The staircases weren't feeling very kind today, which was why it took a few minutes for him to make his way up to the Project Room.

By the time he got there, he had come down from the momentary high of the prank in anticipation entering this familiar place, and he was having some serious mixed emotions about why.

Pulling out the key the Professor had given him a while back, Harry unlocked the door and stepped in, closing the door behind him before walking in and looking around the place.

The chairs, desks and the transfigured sofas were still there. Dust hadn't had the time to settle on the desks they had arranged around the walls as their work surfaces. The library books were still there and so were the quills and half-filled notebooks, scattered all across the work surfaces.

Nothing had changed, yet everything had changed.

And almost involuntarily, his eyes slid shut, and his lightning-fast Gamer's mind responded to a wish that even he didn't know he had, in vivid detail imagining the future that would have come to pass if the last few months had never happened.

The school would have been normal, and their lives unmoved. They would have grown better as a team, researching and studying magic both on and off school course. Heck, time permitting, they would have worked on the Game project, maybe even made a working prototype that would have probably broken down between ten minutes of it coming together.

But they wouldn't have been discouraged. They would have stared at the burning piece of magical technology for a minute before they would have laughed and joyously gone off to celebrate. Dean and Ron would have smurfed down every bit of dessert they would have smuggled away from the kitchens. Hermione would have watched disapprovingly before he and Terry would have forced her into joining in anyway.

Christmas would have been merry, and the New Year's would have been joyous. They would have crushed the end of the year exams before heading off home, eager to come back for a new third year at the school.

And now, all that was gone.

Harry's eyes were wet when he opened them, the sparkle that they had gained during that impromptu revenge prank completely lost. A couple of flicks of his hand made the Identifier Band fall out of his Inventory and onto his palm.

"Observe"

 **The Identifier Band**

 **A magical device capable of identifying any magical creature whose existence has been recorded in its Source Book. Just put on the Band and point your index finger at the creature, say 'Identify' and the name of the creature will carve itself on the band.**

It was only weeks ago that he and Dean had crafted that with the Professor Vector's help. One nightmare ago.

A knock sounded at the door, and a voice came through, echoing around the classroom.

"Mind if I let myself in Harry?" Professor Vector said.

"Give me a second, Professor," Harry called back, wiping his eyes.

The door opened behind him a second later, and the Professor walked in, her steps sounding loud and clear in his ears.

"Did the Aurors search the place?" Harry asked, looking up at her.

"They did. Yesterday evening, after they found out that Argus was missing. They didn't find anything of concern, and as soon as I mentioned that this was where Harry Potter works on his side projects they were quite glad to put everything back where it was before," the Professor said, keenly looking at his face. She asked, "Are you alright Harry?"

"I am. I'm fine really." Harry said, although he knew well before the ping sounded that his lie had been unsuccessful.

Ping!

 **Lie Unsuccessful!**

Professor Vector frowned, "Suppressing how you feel isn't the right way to go about it, Harry. You just went through some really bad times, and feeling dejected is natural. But you have to talk about it."

Harry took a deep breath, deciding to word it better this time, "Thank you for being concerned Professor, but I do know that. I have a family now. I can talk to them about things like this. And I do talk to them. They've been really helpful."

Ping!

 **Maybe you should think about why you have such high levels of Lying and Bullshitting while your Lie Detection is so low. Says a lot about you and those around you. Skill leveled up!**

 **Lying, Lv- 13 (1%)**

 **This is your ability to lie to people, the higher the level the better the lie and less chance of discovery!**

 **67% chance of success, less based on how extreme the lie is.**

Harry frowned. He knew just fine how much of a lying problem he had. He didn't need the game's help in pointing that out.

"If you say so," the Professor hesitantly said, letting go of the topic before saying, "So why are you at school Harry?"

"I had a meeting with Professor Dumbledore," Harry replied, "And I wanted to talk about the Project to you. I, as well as Hermione and Ron…we were all wondering about what will happen to it."

"You tell me. You are the leader of the project after all." The Professor said, her voice pleasant and calm.

"But isn't Hogwarts being shut down for the year? How can I still-"

"The Project is registered with the Ministry, Harry. Not the school. You have the permit, and so long as I don't cut the cord as your supervisor, you can do whatever you want. I won't be cutting the cord unless you want me to, so it's all up to you. Whatever you decide, I will understand."

Harry looked down at the Band in his hands, "I want to keep it going, even if just for the sake of honoring Dean's memory, but I don't think it would be the same without him."

The Professor pondered for a moment, before saying, "Then it's alright if you want to stop for now Harry. Take a break this year. Drop the Project. You've accomplished so much in a few months, and I have no doubt that you'll have no issues catching up once Hogwarts starts back up again. Give yourself time."

Harry nodded. That seemed like a good idea. And he could still work on it on his off time if he wanted to.

"Then that is how it will be," the Professor said before patting his shoulder, "I have an appointment at the Ministry now. You take as much time as you need."

And with that, she turned around and left the room.

Harry stayed there for a few minutes more, idly thinking about this and that as he arranged all the books and notebooks into separate neat stacks so that Madam Pince could take the library books back when she inevitably came looking for them.

It was while finishing up the final stack that an idea struck Harry, and he quickly tidied up and left, heading towards the seventh floor this time.

* * *

The idea, and the Room of Requirement, as it turned out, proved to be entirely useless. The room was fairly good at finding things, and Harry's idea was to go and ask it for the diary.

Much to his frustration, the idea didn't work, which meant that the diary must have been destroyed or something, which in turn didn't bode well for his plan of telling the court about the possession.

'It's alright,' he thought as he told the password to the statue and rode up the revolving staircase leading up to the Headmaster's office. Dumbledore would probably manage to work something out. He'd been part of the legal system for decades now and had a mind that probably surpassed his own Gamer enhanced one.

'If anyone could find a way, it would be Dumbledore.' He thought to himself as he knocked on the door.

"Come on in Harry," came the voice of the Headmaster from inside.

Harry pushed the door open and stepped in, almost unconsciously bracing as memories of the tornado of belongings that he'd walked into the last time he'd walked into this office flashed in his mind.

But no such tornado awaited him. Instead, everything was just as it had been before Dumbledore had left the office. The portraits were still there, all awake and looking at him curiously, the spindly contraptions were on the side tables, whirring and puffing smoke, and behind the claw-footed desk was the Headmaster himself, dressed in violently offensive neon green robes.

"You arrived early, didn't you Harry. My apologies for making you wait. Dilys over there," Dumbledore said, pointing to the portrait of the Headmistress that he had seen on his trip to St Mungo's yesterday, "was telling me about a patient that had come in with a burnt hindquarters and how no one quite knew what it was that did it, so I had to go see for myself. Forgive me, but curiosity does strike my fancy once a while."

"Did you find out what caused it? Some spell?" Harry asked, walking over to the table and taking the guest seat.

"Oh nothing like that," Dumbledore replied as he waved his hand, making the tea set that lay on the table fly up and pour a cup for Harry. "Turned out the man had brought a muggle hair curler and had stuck it up his rear thinking it was something else. It was all cured soon, although I do not envy the healer who had to apply the burn salve. The burns looked rather deep-seated."

Harry stared. Every once in a while, usually with Dumbledore around, he was reminded of how strangely absurd the Wizarding World truly was.

Although considering all else that he had seen, he supposed accidentally using hair curlers as a dildo wasn't all that far out there.

His Gamer's Mind, being the delightfully helpful thing that it was, conjured up a nice little mental image for him.

He then promptly decided that it definitely _was_ far out there.

Deciding to casually pretend that the last minute of conversation had been wiped out of existence by a random black hole dancing through space-time, Harry took a sip of his tea and asked the question on his mind.

"What is the plan for tomorrow's trial? Should I tell them about the possession? That I talked to Riddle?"

Dumbledore's face grew serious, "I have thought about it, and I think pursuing a possession-based defense might be the best option we have. However, Miss Turpin's mind being impenetrable might prove to be an issue"

"What about Imperius Curse? I know that the death eaters during the last war got off on that. That defense must've been really good. I've read that Barty Crouch Sr was really strict on Dark Arts at the time. Why can't we use something like that?"

Dumbledore was shaking his head even before Harry finished, "There were fairly complicated factors at play there, not the least of which were bribes and networking. And remember Harry that the people who will be casting the votes already know that the Imperius defense was popularly used by Death Eaters. Those that know that it had been used to keep guilty people out of prison and are bitter about it would vote against us, and those who themselves used it to stay out of prison would also vote against us."

Harry knew where Dumbledore was going, "Combine that with the families that lost their sons and daughters, who we can assume will vote against us no matter what, we will lose no matter how airtight the defense is."

"Exactly. You have to remember Harry that a Wizarding Criminal trial is not just about the law, but also about the people who vote. It is them we have to convince, and it is them we must focus on the most," Dumbledore said.

"So what do you want me to do?"

"Tell them about the possession without mentioning Lord Voldemort. Say that you saw someone in the Chamber, but were afraid to tell people about it because you thought no one would believe you. Be vague. Your age will give you some liberties. Take advantage of them. Is that clear Harry?

"Crystal," Harry answered before asking, "But what about Lisa? What about her being on the stand?"

Dumbledore's face aged a decade within a second, "Miss Turpin…she does not remember much. A lot of her memories involve blacking out for periods of time. But there are also quite a few things that she _does_ remember and feels guilty about because she does not remember anyone forcing her to those things. Almost all of those I am positive Tom Riddle made her do."

Harry's optimism about the trial plummeted.

Dumbledore wasn't finished, "Further worsening the situation are her mental shields, which make her immune to Veritaserum, and her lack of any recollection whatsoever about the Voldemort's diary. Both no doubt courtesy of Mr. Riddle."

"Letting her take the stand would be bad wouldn't it," Harry asked, leaning tiredly back into his chair.

"To put it lightly, yes,"

Harry sighed, before he looked up at the Headmaster said, "Then I suppose I will have to sway all the people I can."

Dumbledore's eyes twinkled at Harry's statement before he set his untouched cup of tea aside to pull out a small file from his drawer and opened it.

"The Prosecutor the Ministry has appointed for the case is Lord Mulciber," he said as he read the page in the file, "He is a very well respected member of the traditionalist side, and a shrewd politician and attorney. The acting Judge, as always, will remain anonymous until the trial starts. The trial will be held in tomorrow in Courtroom Twelve, beginning at two in the afternoon."

Dumbledore closed the file, took off his glasses and leaned in to look Harry in the eyes.

"You must be careful Harry. You must not interrupt anyone. You must not speak up. You must not appear hostile or biased in any way. And most importantly, you _must not_ give them any reason to use Veritaserum on you."

Harry frowned, "But wouldn't my Occlumency stop it from taking effect or something? Couldn't I just lie to th-"

Dumbledore's voice was quite serious when he interrupted Harry, "There are over a thousand different microexpressions and indicators of Veritaserum taking effect on a person. Those indicators are one of the most well guarded magical secrets, passed on by word of mouth from one Court Administerer to the next. Even I do not know them all. A person who is unaware of those indicators might possibly be duped, but it is _impossible_ to fake the effects of the Truth serum in a Court and not be caught. And the situation is even worse for you."

"Worse for me?"

Dumbledore nodded, "Nicholas tells me that memory spells do not work on you, which prevents us from temporarily rewriting your memories to show that you did sneak past the basilisk. If we had been able to do that, you would have been able to bypass Veritaserum, since you yourself would have believed that to be the truth,"

"But my shields prevent that," Harry whispered in morbid realization. The one protection that he cherished above all was proving to be their undoing.

"They do."

Silence took over the office for a moment, the only sound echoing through being the puffing and whirring of the machines.

"Test me," Harry finally said, breaking the silence, "I'll try to take down my shields. Try to Obliviate me."

"Harry, thi-" Dumbledore began speaking, his expression shocked.

"Don't let me think about this twice Professor," Harry interrupted, "I don't trust myself to not stop you. Just do it. Obliviate the last minute of this conversation from my mind. If we can do this then we can save Lisa's life."

Dumbledore looked him in the eye before he pulled out his wand and pointed it at him. His voice shook as he said his next words, "I have said this before and I will say it again Harry. Never in my years at Hogwarts have I ever been prouder of a student than I am of you. _Obliviate._ "

Harry did his best to exert as much control over Gamer's Mind that he could, commanding his shields to take themselves down as the spell washed over him.

Ping!

 **Memory spell attack averted!**

"Damn it!" Harry cursed in frustration as soon as he heard the ping before he realized who was sitting in front of him, "Sorry Professor."

"No worries Harry, although I presume you already know the result of that little experiment," Dumbledore said, waving away his apologies, "I must say I expected that, but as disappointing as the result may be, you offering to do what you just did…it speaks volumes of your character Harry."

Harry didn't know what to say, so he decided to take a sip of his tea instead. It had lost its heat, leaving behind a cold and bitter concoction.

Dumbledore smiled at him, "I've kept you here for a while. Perenelle must no doubt be wondering when you will be coming home. I would rather not risk her ire if that is fine with you."

"Yeah," said Harry, scratching the back of his head as he looked at the time, "I did tell her that I'd be back within a couple of hours."

"Then off you go Harry. Just hop through from the Floo here this time."

Harry nodded before he got up from his chair and headed over to the fireplace, grabbing the powder and throwing it into the fire. The fire turned green and Harry stepped in. Seconds later he was off, hurtling through the Floo Network in the direction of his home.

After Harry had disappeared in a burst of green flames from the fireplace, Albus Dumbledore pulled his wand out and vanished the Veritaserum laced tea that Harry had been drinking out of his cup.

The experiment that Harry had volunteered for was only one of the two that Dumbledore had been conducting this meeting.

Both had failed.

* * *

"It's getting late Harry!" rang Nicholas's voice from downstairs just as Harry finished fluffing up a pillow for Hedwig on his bed.

" _Just go Harry. I'll be fine,_ " Hedwig's voice sounded in his head.

Nodding, Harry quickly grabbed his wand and ran out of the room and down the stairs, where Nicholas was waiting for him beside the door. They quickly made their way down the corridor and into the small room that held the floor's Floo connection.

Handing two sickles over to the doorman, Nicholas grabbed the Floo powder and threw it into the fire.

"After you, Harry," he said, waving Harry into the fireplace.

Harry acquiesced, stepping into the fireplace before saying, " _Ministry of Magic!_ "

And he was whooshed away, flitting through an ethereal black space with many momentarily visible green specks of light whizzing by him as he headed towards one green spot of light that grew. Harry braced himself, carefully managing to step out of the fireplace without stumbling.

Flooing was still something he wasn't entirely used to, he thought as he looked up at the splendid hallway in front of him.

The highly polished dark wood floor and walls, the peacock blue ceiling inlaid with gleaming moving golden symbols and many gilded fireplaces looked just as grand as they had the first time he had come to the Ministry. The number of people going in and out of the fireplaces was much less though since it was midday, and other than the few dozen people who were hurriedly walking through towards the atrium, the hallway was fairly empty.

Nicholas emerged in a burst of flame from the fireplace behind him before placing a hand on his shoulder, "Let's go, Harry. We don't want to be late."

Passing the Fountain of Magical Brethren halfway down the hall, they joined the small crowd of people, wading their way through towards the Security desk near the left corner of the Atrium. Occasional snippets of strange and curious conversations reached his ears.

"…just send your toilet over to the DMLE and they'll lick it clean for you…"

"…if your wife gets mad at you for yelling at your kids, just put a coin in your sock every time you yell at them. Soon you'll have a weapon to beat them with…"

"…my goat got my baby stuck in a tree…"

But Nicholas had a firm grip on his shoulder as he guided them hurriedly through to the Security desk, and Harry had no time to investigate any of them.

"Step over here," said the wizard in a bored voice as they reached the desk.

Harry walked closer to him and the wizard held up a long golden rod, thin and flexible as a car aerial, and passed it up and down Harry's front and back before doing the same for Nicholas.

"Wands," grunted the security wizard at them, putting down the golden instrument and holding out his hand. The wizard read the wands on the brass instrument one by one, before handing them back.

"Thank you," said Nicholas firmly, and grasping Harry by the shoulder he steered him away from the desk and back into the stream of wizards and witches walking through the golden gates.

Harry followed him through the gates into the smaller hall beyond, where at least twenty lifts stood behind golden grilles. Harry and Nicholas picked one that looked like it was empty. They hurriedly jogged over to the lift, and before anyone else could get in, Nicholas slid the grills shut and pressed the button labeled Level Nine.

The lift gave a groan before it ascended slowly with a shudder, carrying the two of them.

The hall soon disappeared into the floor, and they were alone in the lift. Nicholas turned to look him in the eyes, "I'm sure Albus stressed it enough in your meeting yesterday, Harry, but remember not to lose your cool in there. Mulciber will be looking for weaknesses, and he will definitely try to provoke you. Don't let him."

"I know Nicholas," Harry said over the rattling noise, "Professor told me all that yesterday."

"I have no doubt," Nicholas said. The flickering light on his face made him look older than Harry had ever seen him look, "But he has a habit of trying to sugarcoat things. I'll be blunt. This trial is being seen as so damaging and polarising that even Fudge refused any part in it. People are out for revenge, and they are not looking to hold back. Just promise me that you will be careful in there."

There was a palpable worry in the man's voice, and it was kind of off-putting to see someone that Harry was used to being cheerful look like that. He nodded, agreeing to that promise.

"Department of Mysteries," the female voice sounded and left it at that.

They were on the only floor that Harry had not been to in his tour with Mr. Bagman all those months back. He quickly cast an Observe on the label above the lift button labeled 9, hoping it would work.

 **Level 9: The Department of Mysteries**

 **The Department of Mysteries, located on Level Nine, is a section of the Ministry of Magic that carries out confidential research regarding particular enigmas that magic has yet to solve. Most of its operations are carried out in total secrecy from the general wizard populace.**

Harry frowned. Why were they here?

The grill rattled open all by itself this time and answered Harry's question, revealing the familiar form of Professor Dumbledore, dressed in a midnight blue set of robes.

"Good to see you here Nicholas," he greeted before turning to him, "Ready Harry?"

"Hold on Albus," Nicholas interrupted, "Are you _absolutely_ sure that they will not allow me to sit with Harry? This is highly unusual for a court to do."

"I am positive. The judge waived the guardian's rights for the trial because both the accused and the primary witness are underage. It was done by popular vote to avoid delaying the trial more. Miss Turpin's mother was quite devastated, but I couldn't do much to stop them." Dumbledore gravely replied.

The statement had all sorts of bad implications, but the one that struck Harry the hardest wasn't the legal stuff.

Her mother. Lisa had a mother. She was a widow who worked at the Ministry.

'I had forgotten that,' Harry thought as his stomach churned with an odd mixture of shame and guilt. He wondered what she must be feeling right now, with her daughter being pushed into a trial that could get her branded as a criminal and her job no doubt in peril.

Deciding to put that into the pile of reasons why it was important to save Lisa, Harry started to pay attention to Dumbledore again. They had started to head down the corridor towards the polished door.

"…you will have to sit in the viewer's gallery I'm afraid, but Mrs. Turpin will be sitting there as well and I am glad that you will be there to give her at least some support through this."

"There is that," Nicholas said with a sigh as they reached a fork in the corridor, "Well. This is where I have to go right and you left. Good luck Harry. And to you too Albus. I will be watching."

With that, Nicholas headed through an opening and down the flight of stairs towards the right, and Dumbledore guided Harry down the left.

They reached the bottom of the steps and walked in silence along yet another corridor, which bore a great resemblance to the one that led to Professor Snape's dungeon at Hogwarts, with rough stone walls and torches in brackets. The doors they passed here were heavy wooden ones with iron bolts and keyholes.

The Professor opened one of the heavy doors and walked right in. Harry eyed the engraving on top of the door.

 _Courtroom Twelve_

There was a bleak and forbidding air about the place. The walls were made of dark stone, dimly lit by torches. There were no pictures on the walls, no decorations at all. Just the serried rows of benches full of people that Harry knew were Wizengamot members, rising in levels all around the room, all positioned so that they had a clear view of the center, which was presumably where the arguments took place.

Ahead, in the highest bench of all, was a shadowy figure. The Judge. The window above his head told Harry his name, which was Rudolph Barnes. Harry had no idea who that was, which was why he cast the Observe.

 **Rudolph Barnes**

 **(Relationship Meter: 0%)**

 **Lv-50**

 **HP-17000/17000**

 **MP-8000/8000**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-21**

 **Vit-32**

 **Dex-20**

 **Int-39**

 **Wis-29**

 **Luc-16**

 **Rudolph Barnes is a wizard and a member of Wizengamot of some influence. He has practiced traditionalist leaning politics, but is seen as a fair minded family man on both sides due to his past service in DMLE. He is a decent dueler and is fluent in Spanish. He has two daughters and a wife whom he dearly loves.**

 **He has never before been appointed to the position of acting Judge, and is quite nervous, but is trying not to show it.**

 **He has no strong opinion about Harry.**

Harry waved away the Observe. There wasn't anything too notable here but did help dissuade a lot of his fears. The low voices that had been echoing around the courtroom stopped as the heavy door swung close behind Harry and Dumbledore.

A cold male voice, Judge Barnes's voice, rang across the courtroom, "Take your seat in the witness gallery Mr. Potter."

Harry looked around, before quickly identifying the slightly raised group of benches beside the Judge's seat to be the witness section. He obligingly walked over and took his seat, which he realized was quite lower than the Judge's.

An elderly man who looked a few decades younger than Dumbledore walked over to stand just off the center of the room. Dumbledore walked over to stand beside him.

"Lord Mulciber," the judge asked, "Will the accused not be presented to the court?"

"The Prosecution has waived the presentation of the accused until the time of her testimony arrives out of respect for the families of the deceased amongst us" the elderly man, Mulciber, said with a genial smile.

"Very well then. Is the defense ready to begin?"

"We are your Honour."

"As is the Prosecution."

"Very well then. Court scribe take note. This trial has begun," The judge said out loud to the silent room, before reading the charges from a file on his desk.

"The accused Lisa Turpin stands charged with the following: Murder of 8 minors and one Silvanus Kettleburn on January 9th 1993; Purchase of illegal potion ingredients; Purposeful endangerment; and Terrorism. Prosecutor Mulciber and Defence Attorney Dumbledore arguing before the presiding judge Rudolph Barnes, along with court scribe Bigglesworth McToot. How does the defendant plead?"

"Not guilty on all charges."

A wave of murmurs spread across the room. Harry could make out quite a few faces in the darkness, easily picking out Amelia Bones and Malfoy along with quite a few other people he had met at the New Year's parties, all keenly watching Dumbledore.

The judge took a note, "Very well then. The Prosecution shall be opening with a statement, followed by Defence."

Dumbledore walked off to stand by the side, giving the floor to Mulciber, who cleared his throat before beginning.

"Our world has just witnessed one of the most devastating events in the past decade. A Basilisk, armed with its deadly gaze, was veiled in the shroud of a powerful secrecy charm and cast loose upon Hogwarts, killing nine people and petrifying four others. In the last few days, our minds have been full of questions. Who did it? Who is the Heir of Slytherin? Who was the one that set the Basilisk free? Who took and killed Dean Thomas? Who took Lisa Turpin into the Chamber? Well, your Honor the answer has been hiding behind a mask of innocence all this time. It is none other than Lisa Turpin herself. She was not _taken_ down the chamber. She walked in there willingly. SHE is the heir! And today, with the evidence we have found against her and our expert witnesses, we will put her to justice."

Mulciber bowed before he headed to the side and yielded the floor to Dumbledore.

"In light of recent events," he started, "it is more than understandable that our people are feeling anger. They want the culprit punished, and they want it fast which is also understandable. However, what is not understandable is the Prosecution's attempts at directing that anger at Miss Turpin. No doubt there has been a lot of pressure on the Ministry to find and convict the culprit, but to desperately pin the blame on someone innocent is not something that we stand for."

The mutterings started up again, this time accompanied with quite a few nodding heads.

Dumbledore continued, "And that desperation shows in his words. Lord Mulciber just mentioned a powerful secrecy charm that managed to shroud the Basilisk from all eyes, including my own. Does he mean to say that a 12-year-old cast that charm? The flaws in his arguments are already showing. Do not let this fool you."

It was working. A considerable amount of the whispers that reached Harry's ears were positive. Dumbledore had made a solid point about her age, and that had resonated well.

"Very well then," the Judge's cool voice sounded, "Prosecution. Who is your first witness?"

"I would like to ask for Auror Dawlish to take the stand," Mulciber said as he eyed Dumbledore warily.

The judge agreed, and Auror Dawlish rose from his seat and took the witness stand.

"We know that Miss Turpin was either taken or went into the Chamber and Mr. Dean Thomas followed her in. Sometime later, Harry Potter found the way into the Chamber with the help of his phoenix companion, found Mr. Thomas dead and Miss Turpin unconscious, and got them out of there," Mulciber stated before asking, "What happened in that time?"

Dawlish's voice was monotonous and rehearsed when he answered the question, "We've worked out that Miss Turpin was immersed in a cauldron that contained a Potion that has yet to be identified. That we know by the burns all over her body when she was found. And Dean Thomas pushed the cauldron over and made her spill out, disrupting the brewing process and causing some sort of backlash that might have been the reason behind the death of Dean Thomas and the destruction that was found in the Chamber itself."

"Is there any indication whatsoever of anyone else ever being in there?"

"No. None at all."

"Tell us about this gramophone device you found. The one that was said to have been continuously playing harsh hissing sounds when it was found." The Prosecutor asked, his tone sounding saccharinely pleasant with a noticeable undertone of eagerness.

"That was a gramophone enchanted to switch between two sounds. One was a song, and the other was a Parseltongue recording in Miss Turpin's voice saying something along the veins of ' _kill them all_ '," Dawlish replied in that same rehearsed tone.

"A parseltongue recording saying that? How did you reach to that conclusion?"

"We used an experiment with a few snakes that one of our Junior Aurors suggested we try."

"An experiment, your Honour," Mulciber said as he turned around with a flap of his robes, sounding like a stage actor about to say his best line, "that we have set up to show the court right now. May I?"

"Go ahead."

Mulciber gave a wave of his wand and the door that Harry had entered from opened. A wizard levitated a table into the room, which he placed in the center, in clear view of everyone.

On the table, much to Harry's shock was the same gramophone that Harry had seen in the Chamber, and a large transparent glass cage containing what appeared to be dozens upon dozens of snakes, writhing around simultaneously in an entangled mass in the box.

Mulciber turned the gramophone on with a flick of his wand, and a scathing harsh hissing sound filled the Courtroom, echoing again and again from the giant walls. A wave of discomfiture traveled through the room. Someone in the back row squeaked with horror.

A window popped up in the corner of his vision.

 **Parseltongue Skill Active!**

And the hissing slowly softened and flowed together into comprehensible words.

 _"Kill them all. Kill them all. Kill them all…"_

Harry knew what was going to happen before it happened. Blood spurted against the walls of the glass cage as the snakes in the glass cage stabbed their fangs into each other, obeying the single command that was being given to them in Parseltongue as they tore each other apart into pieces.

Multiple screams rang out in the room, as some averted their eyes from the cage and others watched with horrified fascination.

"ORDER!" Judge Barnes loudly ordered over the screams as he slammed his gavel down, "That is _enough_! Your point has been made."

The sound stopped, and the wizard promptly levitated the table back out of the courtroom. Mulciber stepped forth with a victorious expression on his face.

"It is fairly clear what the recording said, which means we now know the reason why the Basilisk attacked the Great Hall that day. An instruction, in _Lisa Turpin's_ voice, telling it to go kill them. The connection is obvious. _She_ was the one who had the Basilisk kill everyone. _SHE_ is the culprit we are looking for."

And with that, Mulciber undid every single bit of work that Dumbledore had done. Harry had no doubt that every single person in the room would have voted Guilty if they had been asked right this moment. He had no idea how anyone could salvage this situation.

But Dumbledore's stride was purposeful as he headed over to the witness stand to ask his own question.

"Are there any details you have on this potion that you are aware of?" he asked, and silence reigned. No one, not even Harry had expected _this_ question.

Dawlish frowned, before answering, "I'd say it was fairly complex, considering it probably took months to brew in there."

Dumbledore did not hesitate, "Would you say that it could be brewed by a twelve-year-old alone?"

"Er…no," Dawlish replied, floundering a bit, "Pretty sure it couldn't. Our potions master said so himself."

Dumbledore turned to look up at the people watching uncertainly, as he spoke, "Esteemed members of the Wizengamot, this is proof that someone else was involved who more knowledgeable in potions. The one who manipulated Miss Turpin into using her apparent Parseltongue ability to record this message. The one who cast the enchantments from her wand. The one who guided her through making such a powerful potion. And _that_ is the real culprit here."

Mulciber, who had probably realized that Dumbledore was starting to sway people, suddenly spoke up, "The Prosecution would like to call witness Harry Potter to the stand!"

The Judge agreed, and Harry, hoping that his acting was up to par, made his over to the witness stand, where Mulciber asked, "Mr. Potter? That night, was there anyone else you saw in there?"

Harry knew that now was the time to shine his skills, "Yes. I did."

Mulciber looked like lightning had struck him where he stood, " _What?!_ Your official statement very clearly states that you saw no one else in there."

Making sure his voice was shaking a bit, he looked down, and said, "I did. I saw a man there, but before I could even see anything about him, he disappeared. I knew that people couldn't apparate inside Hogwarts, so I was afraid that if I told people they'd think I was a liar."

"That is a _lie_!" The elderly Lord snapped at him before he whirled around to look at the judge, "Your Honour, the witness is being uncooperative and is muddling facts. I demand a vote for Veritaserum!"

"I'm not lyin-" Harry started to refute, but was interrupted by Mulciber.

"Do stay quiet unless you are spoken to _Mr._ _Potter_ ," he snapped, "Maybe if you hadn't spent so much time moping over your friend's body in the chamber, then perhaps countless others would have been saved."

Harry's vision flashed red, and he would have probably done something _really_ _bad_ if the loud babblings of the Wizengamot members around him disapproving of Mulciber's words hadn't driven into him that he was being watched.

Instead, he settled for gritting his teeth and glaring at the man.

"That was out of line Lord Mulciber!" the Judge firmly chastised, "Mr. Potter not only had reasonable cause for what he did, but he also felt it right to confess in the middle of the trial. Your motion is denied! Any further mistreatment of witnesses will result in you being removed from your role as Prosecutor."

Mulciber glared at Harry, before turning to the judge and gritting out, "No more questions."

Dumbledore called from where he was standing, "No more questions from Defence as well." Harry could tell that he had a small smile on his face.

And so Harry went back, a small victory under his belt.

"The Prosecution would now like to call the accused to the stand." Mulciber finally said when Harry was back in his own seat.

"Objection!" was Dumbledore's immediate response, "Miss Turpin is nowhere near good mental health and the time she was forced to spend in detention here in the Ministry further exacerbated her condition. Letting her take the stand is by no means fair."

Mulciber's voice was snide and condescending as he refuted Dumbledore, "She is conscious and can answer questions. I don't think we need anything more than that."

The judge considered them both for a second before, much to Harry's dismay, he said, "I will allow it."

And with that, the preparations for bringing the accused girl began. A small portion of the floor in the center of the room vanished, and a foreboding looking chair with chains hanging off of the limbs rose up. An Auror escorted Lisa into the room, and Harry watched concerned as he took in her pasty skin, her sunken cheeks and her stumbling walk.

He worriedly cast his Healing skill at her, wondering if he could help with whatever was wrong with her.

Ping!

 **You are attempting to heal somebody with several ailments! Please chose one to heal:**

 **Insomnia**

 **Vitamin K deficiency**

 **Fractured Mind**

 **Magical Trauma**

Harry frowned as he selected Fractured Mind.

 **WARNING: Status effect is MENTAL in nature and is very deep rooted. Removal has 80% risk of rendering the subject psychotic, 10% chance of rendering subject brain dead and 10% chance of permanent neural damage. Chances of recovery, 0%.**

 **Proceed?**

 **YES/NO**

Harry almost cursed, before he pressed NO and selected the Magical Trauma.

 **WARNING: Patient has fractured dream-like memories about times in which she used the magic to do terrible things. These memories are causing her to consciously be repulsed by her own magic. Thus, the magic turns inward, harming her. Any heal would only be temporary unless she learns to trust her magic again.**

 **Proceed for 6 month heal?**

 **YES/NO**

This one Harry pressed yes on. Six months was a long enough period of time, and not having her own magic harming her was always a good thing. He also pressed heal on her Insomnia and Vitamin K deficiency and gladly watched as some of her color returned to her face as she took her seat on the chair. She still looked completely unresponsive and in shock, but at least her body was healing.

But Harry's good mood wasn't to last too long.

Mulciber, who had been watching as Lisa was being escorted in, had another blow to deliver, "Your Honor. I propose a motion for a vote on Veritaserum. Reasonable doubt has more than been established, and we wouldn't want her mental state affecting her truthfulness would we?"

And whether it was because she wasn't Harry or for some other reason, the Judge did not hesitate this time, "Very well then. We will put it to a vote."

Harry's heart felt swollen against his ribcage. If they gave Lisa Veritaserum and it didn't work, people would no doubt start distrusting her, just like Dumbledore had distrusted him when he had learned about his shields. That would no doubt be damaging.

"Those in favor of using Veritaserum,"

A clear majority voted yes, and Harry's stomach plummeted.

"Call for the Court Administerer and the Court Legilimencer both," the judge said, sending an aide running through a side door to call for the two people that Harry definitely did not want Lisa to encounter today.

It was another full minute before the aide returned with two hooded figures, one of whom stood by the sidelines and the other moved closer to Lisa. There was a tiny glass vial of truth potion in his hand.

He pried open her mouth and dropped three drops of it into her mouth, before kneeling down and starting to continuously peer at her face.

Seconds turned into minutes as the whispers ringing across the hall grew, and eventually, even the judge lost his patience.

"What is going on?" he asked, irritated.

"It is not working," was the simple monotone reply as the man stood up, "Her Occlumency is too strong."

And the distrustful whispers started growing rapidly along with Harry's sense of unrest. It was just like Dumbledore said. You couldn't fake being under Veritaserum under court. And Lisa wasn't even trying.

"Order! Order!" the judge said, smacking his gavel to silence the room, "Court Legilimencer, can you confirm this?"

The other hooded man walked over to the middle of the room before he too dropped down onto a knee before Lisa. He looked her in the eye for a second, presumably trying Legilimency to enter her mind. Harry knew before he did that he would be unsuccessful.

"I can confirm," the Court Legilimencer said flatly a second later, "She has some of the strongest shields I have ever encountered."

Angry and suspicious mutters spread across the entire Wizengamot.

Harry was starting to worry, but one look at Dumbledore fixed that. The man had a plan, and it became even more obvious when he started to speak.

"It is clear that this effect on her mind is due to the trauma of the possession. She has blank memories, has shown multiple instances of knowing more than anyone her age does and has mental trauma. The fact that it was a possession is even bolstered by Mr. Potter's testimony of a disappearing man-"

Dumbledore was winning people over, and Mulciber knew it, which was why he loudly interrupted him, " _Possessed_ was she? She was possessed for what was the better part of the year and _absolutely no one_ noticed? She did not show any changes in behavior? Should we be prosecuting the venerable _Headmaster_ and Miss Turpin's mother for criminal negligence then? "

He took a breath and barrelled on," That girl is a _Parseltongue_ who is using Occlumency stronger than most of us in the room can. Her finding a potions recipe feels unrealistic to you? And what trauma are you talking about? In all my years at the ministry, I have never heard of anyone _learning Occlumency_ from a spirit that possessed them. You keep piling on theory after theory connecting dots there aren't even there, yet the only evidence you have is the word of a child that is no doubt traumatized by the events of the Chamber and thus cannot be trusted to be fully accurate. This has to be utter _nonsense_ coming from an incompetent teacher who has clearly gone senile."

The whole hall erupted in a massive din, with the families that supported Dumbledore shouting obscenities at Mulciber, and the families allied with Mulciber shouting back to defend him. Sounds of slamming desks with hands and hoarse screams echoed in Harry's ears as he admired Mulciber's tactic with a sick feeling.

The man had, in the guise of losing his temper, singlehandedly drowned out anything that Dumbledore had to say.

BOOM!

The sudden sound of the explosion almost ripped Harry's eardrum apart. The whole hall suddenly fell silent.

Dumbledore lowered his wand, before pointedly looking at the judge.

"Ah. Yes," the Judge said, regaining his bearings before he instructed, "It is clear that spirits are running high now. We will be dispersing for today and will be reconvening tomorrow for further on this case. Court dispersed!"

And with that final gavel, it ended.

The trial wrapped up in the next few minutes, and a few minutes after that, Harry, Nicholas, and Dumbledore were sitting in Dumbledore's office. Harry was silently sitting as the two adults discussed how the trial had gone and what to do next.

"You miscalculated Albus," Nicholas gravely said.

"I know," Dumbledore replied, "Something was wrong there. The motion for Veritaserum should not have been _nearly_ as unanimous. The votes are being influenced, and the prosecutor is no doubt being coached to take Miss Turpin down as brutally as possible. Someone is meddling to make sure that Lisa Turpin does not survive this."

Nicholas hummed in agreement, "Either way, our defense is frail. Right now, the only things we have going for us is the sheer unbelievability of a 12-year-old doing all that magic and Harry's testimony. Your possession argument was holding well before Mulciber interrupted you, but it will not be enough."

"I know," Dumbledore said with a tired sigh, "This entire generation has been coached to fear Parseltongue after Lord Voldemort, and that fear hadn't gotten the time to settle in today's court. It will have tomorrow, and people will be much less sympathetic towards Miss Turpin. We need to bolster our possession defense."

"Professor…" said Harry, who had been quiet this entire time, lost in his thoughts, "Please don't take this the wrong way. It's just a thought that I just had."

He had been using Gamer's Mind to rifle through possible defenses, and an idea formed in his head. It sat uneasy with him, but he had to share it.

"What is it?" Nicholas asked with a frown.

Harry's own voice sounded unbelieving to his ears as he spoke, "Those people in there, those grieving families and angry people, they're looking for someone to blame. Right now, that someone is Lisa. But what if they found someone else to blame. Someone who was twisted and resentful due to not having any magic. Someone who had been confiscating and collecting dark artifacts from students for _decades_. Someone who would appear to be willing to use those dark artefacts to do harm to a school that he had always been resentful towards. Someone who has been suspiciously missing for the last week."

And contrary to the instantly disgusted rejection of the idea that he had expected from both Nicholas and Dumbledore, their faces morphed into troubled frowns.

They were considering it.

* * *

It was a particularly gloomy night. The soft whooshing sounds of dozens of dementors gliding along the dark obsidian floors of Azkaban prison echoed across the cramped hallways, with the only other sound being that of the nightguard repeatedly clanging his baton against the bars of the doors as he checked on each of the prisoners.

A sickly thin dog huddled upon itself in the corner of one of the cells, shivering as it tried not to let the January cold seep into its heart and still it forever. The terrible memories were still there in his mind for him, the nightmares still persistent, but they were dampened. Blurred by the simple chemistry and thought processes of the animal mind.

He felt a spike of joy and gratitude towards his friends and his old Transfiguration teacher for teaching him so well that he was capable enough as a student to make this transformation without any professional help.

The chill near the room grew, and the dog hurriedly huddled into itself. The dementor must have sensed the joy, and was here trying to find its next snack. Its next morsel of food. That momentary spike of joy slowly drained away into a vast vat of nothingness, leaving behind naught but sorrow and misery.

Such was Azkaban. A place reserved for those the wizarding world felt undeserving of joy and happiness. Where prisoners couldn't even be granted the mercy of death unless they decided to slowly starve themselves away, or just managed to break out a splinter of their own bone and stabbed themselves through the heart with it. Where their bodies would lie undiscovered for weeks until the next nightguard came along to inspect the prisoners.

Suddenly, the cold started to slowly fade away, and the clanging of the nightguard's bell drew ever nearer. The dog, knowing that staying in that form would risk exposing the life-saving secret he had, shifted back to his human form, pulling his rags closer around himself to shield from the cold.

A pair of steps rang through the corridor.

CLANG! rang the iron baton against the bars of the cell next to his own. The nightguard's voice echoed down the corridor, "Wake up! Wake up you cunt! Good morning Bellatrix. Say hello to the morning sun you little bitch!"

More steps.

CLANG!

"Look here Black! Show me that pretty little face. Gotta make sure you're all alive here."

Black…that was his name. Sirius Black. He turned around to stare out the iron grates. The nightguard stood there in black robes with a grin on his face, his jackal Patronus shining a warm light around him. It was a momentary relief, tainted by the fact that it would soon be gone with its owner.

But moments passed, and the guard did not leave.

"Remember the lad you tried to get killed, Black? The one that blew your master up?", the nightguard asked with a cruel smile on his face.

'Harry,' his mind reminded him, finally functional in the shade of the nightguard's Patronus. He shook his head. He did not kill him. He did not try to kill him. He never even could have. He was his godson…his life. He loved him. More than anything.

The nightguard continued, taking the shaking of his head as a sign of acknowledgment, "Well lookie here. That lad not only survived his magic-hating family and his Defense teacher trying to off him last year but also a giant snake roaming around Hogwarts killing people. Pretty sure he helped save a kid or two too."

The guard pulled out a newspaper from his pocket before throwing it at him as hard as he could. The newspaper smacked him in the face before falling into his lap, leaving a stinging red mark behind.

"Read it, you bastard. Know, that you _failed_. Your master is dead. The kid you tried to kill has a new family to care for him now and is surviving anything the world is throwing at him. He survived an entire fucking massacre. Your entire damn betrayal was for nothing. Fucking let that sink in. I'll be back a few hours later to take my paper back."

And with that, the Patronus and its owner passed on, clanging on the next cells after his own, carrying with him the warmth that had momentarily graced him.

But oddly enough, the clarity of mind that the Patronus had momentarily gifted him with did not pass. The bruised face of his godson on the front page captured his entire attention, and the world around him faded away as he immersed himself into the words that rose up at him from the newspaper.

 _…8 students and 1 teacher had fallen prey to the terrible gaze of the Basilisk…_

 _…He found the entrance to Chamber of Secrets and went in…_

 _…I didn't want to risk anyone else's life…_

 _…Massacre at Hogwarts…_

He had failed. Failed to protect his godson from all that would harm him. Failed to save him from the nightmares of the world around him. Failed to give him a shoulder to lean on as he watched his friend die…

Failed…

Not anymore.

There were certain emotions that a Dementor could not suck away. Disgust. Self Loathing. Hate. Yet those were all powerful emotions, and it was their power that had given Sirius Black something that he had not had in over eleven years.

Purpose.

With a mere thought, his magic rose up like a coiled beast springing up into action, infiltrating every inch of his body as he commanded his Animagus transformation again. His bones cracked and shifted, his snout elongated, his backbone rearranged, and the rags that were his clothes slowly disappeared as long matted coat of black fur appeared all over his body.

Mere seconds later, where there was once a man, now once again stood the grim.

Later that night, when the nightguard returned from his round around the prison to take his newspaper before leaving for home, the cell was empty.

* * *

 **What do you think about Harry's idea of pushing blame onto Argus Filch? It has bad moral implications for Harry as he's pushing one innocent down the pit to help another. But on the other hand, that innocent is already under Voldemort's control. Any thoughts about the portrayal of the trial? And did you like the Sirius scene?**


	37. Book-II:Unknown We Fear

Chapter 17:

"Keep in mind that since yesterday we had to disperse pre-emptively, today's proceedings will be short and decisive. Both sides have prepared their arguments and will only get one chance to present their cases, after which we will disperse and re-gather tomorrow for the _final_ verdict. With that understood, let today's proceedings begin," the Judge said, slamming his gavel down.

Dumbledore swept over to the center of the courtroom, his half-moon glasses glinting in the firelight. "The Defense would like to present first your Honor," he said, and Harry leaned forward, eagerly listening for how he was about to present their argument.

The last day had been difficult, and it had been hours of serious, occasionally tense, discussions between Dumbledore and Nicholas before they had finally reached a conclusion that they would use the idea.

It took Harry some time to convince himself that he wouldn't be condemning the man. No one knew where Filch had gone, and if he was found, then they could easily hide him until such a time that Lisa's mind and magic had fully healed, and the truth could be known. They didn't have to condemn Filch. They just had to cast enough doubt in the minds of the voters.

Nicholas had called it, 'stalling for time'.

Harry wasn't quite sure he agreed with the assessment, but he was the one who had come up with the idea after all and even if didn't sit well with him, it was the best they had for now.

With a deep sigh, he turned to look at the company he had today.

Since today, he hadn't been required to stand witness, he had been told to sit up here in the visitor's gallery with Nicholas and Lisa's mum, Margaret Turpin, who were the only people allowed in due to the trial's restricted nature. The nature of Lisa's arrest had been mostly kept out of the public eye, and little had actually made it to the newspapers, which was quite surprising.

"I would like to ask for Auror Dawlish to take the stand once again."

Dumbledore's voice drew Harry's attention back to the center of the room, which looked much smaller from this bird's eye view he had from the Visitor's Gallery. But still, Dawlish's form was easily identifiable to his eyes as he made his way to the witness stand.

"Throughout the last weeks, the Auror force has been screening every inch of the Hogwarts castle, checking security enchantments, interviewing the staff, looking into records and reporting the findings to the DMLE. Am I correct?" Dumbledore asked pleasantly.

"You are," Dawlish replied tersely.

"And at what point did the DMLE realize that Argus Filch, the in-residence caretaker, was missing from the campus?"

The almost tangible blanket of curiosity solidified over the Wizengamot as members old and young watched keenly, wondering where this was going. Dawlish looked a bit taken aback at that question too, and took a moment before he replied, "We realized that he was missing about four days ago, and we confirmed it yesterday evening after our search finished."

The statement showed weakness, and Dumbledore wasted no time in moving in on that, "Have you not been in Hogwarts for weeks now? Why, in your opinion, did it take so long for the Auror force to realize that one of the staff was missing?"

"Well…you know," Dawlish squirmed uncomfortably, "He…he's one of them lot, isn't he? A _squib_. He can't do magic. We didn't really think to look for him until we stumbled across his office during one of our rounds."

"A squib?" he heard Lisa's mum mutter, almost as if she had never even imagined that Filch could have been born without magic. Mutterings and murmurings of a similar tone spread through the courtroom crowd. Apparently, the old caretaker had managed to keep that particular secret closer to his chest than Harry had thought.

"I would like the Court to note that squibs, while unable to cast spells, remain perfectly able to use magical objects. The reason they cannot brew is that all potions require wand spellcasting at some step or the other. There is no such issue with magical artifacts. Mr. Filch has used Dark Arts Detectors many times, same as our Ministry security wizard does even today," Dumbledore's said, his voice cold, before turning back to Dawlish, "And do tell us what you found in the said office?"

"Bunch of detention records, loads of bits and bobs that he confiscated from students over the years, and loads of cat food," Dawlish answered warily.

"In those bits and bobs, would you say there were any… _questionable_ artifacts?" Dumbledore pushed on.

Dawlish's eyes shifted to the shadows where Mulciber was standing, before he hesitantly replied, "Yes."

"Would you care to list them for us?"

"We…found two Hands of Glory, thirteen different cursed books, eight items of jewelry enchanted with dark curses of all kinds, and a Black Quill; also called Blood Quill."

A moment of silence followed, and Dumbledore let it hang, letting the statement sink into the minds of those listening.

"Thank you, Auror Dawlish," he finally said, and Dawlish promptly left the stand and went back to his seat.

"We have found the final piece of the puzzle," Dumbledore said gravely, "Argus Filch. Someone who has been resentful towards Hogwarts and its students for not having been born with the gift of magic. Someone who could move through the school with complete anonymity, free to use any of the dark artefacts he had confiscated from students throughout the decades. Someone with both the intent and the means to do harm."

Harry scanned the crowd. A lot of people were hanging onto Dumbledore's every word, and it was looking more and more promising by the second. He looked over to his guardian sitting beside him, intending on sharing a quick smile.

But Nicholas was intensely peering at the center of the room, his expression dead serious.

He'd noticed something.

"What happened?" Harry whispered to him, instantly on edge.

"Mulciber," Nicholas whispered back, "He is too calm."

Harry's head snapped towards where the Prosecutor was standing. Sure enough, the man was standing there with a small smug smile on his face, not at all phased by the Defense's seemingly effective statements.

"Observe," he cast, feeling slightly worried.

 **Markus Mulciber**

 **(Relationship Meter: 0%)**

 **Lv-52**

 **HP-16500/16500**

 **MP-8200/8200**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-15**

 **Vit-28**

 **Dex-31**

 **Int-43**

 **Wis-25**

 **Luc-19**

 **Markus Mulciber is a wizard and a powerful member of Wizengamot. He practices traditionalistic politics, and advocates against muggleborns. He was one of the first Death Eaters ever, and is loyal to the pureblood society. He is a master spellcaster, and is fluent in dark arts. His son is currently in Azkaban.**

 **He is feeling relaxed and confident in his future argument.**

 **He thinks Harry could be a powerful force, but his feelings towards him lean towards antagonistic.**

'But what!' Harry thought with frustration, 'what is his argument?!'

Shoving the window away, Harry focused on the center of the room once again.

Dumbledore had carried on, "Using the available evidence, we can easily see what happened. Argus Filch, who had the habit of collecting dark magical artifacts as a means to feel closer to the gift he was never born with, encountered a dark artifact that he knew was so dangerous and harmful that he knew he could not keep. Fearful of consequences, yet not forgetful of his own resentment towards the school, he let the dark artifact slip into the hands of young Miss Turpin. Unknown to him, the dark artifact contained a dangerous spirit capable of possessing Miss Turpin, which explains her mental state and how she knew spells and potions that no one her age could, as well as how she spoke Parseltongue, despite not having a long wizarding ancestry."

Harry eyed the Prosecution advocate warily, Nicholas's observation sounding more and more worrying in his head. The previous day, the man hadn't allowed Dumbledore a moment of space, continuously attacking and keeping the pressure on them using any means he could, even momentarily risking his own expulsion.

So why was he so relaxed today?

"Possessed by that very spirit," the Professor continued, his voice echoing throughout the silent courtroom, "Miss Turpin was forced to do all these heinous things, made to live a nightmare that was never her fault in the first place. When Argus learned that his actions caused all this, he ran, letting the entire blame fall onto Miss Turpin's head. _That_ is the full story."

The Wizengamot was still skittish, but in light of the complete picture that Dumbledore had just painted, there was no doubt that they were at least considering what he was saying. The few people he knew were solidly traditionalistic-leaning looked resolved, as if their votes had already been decided, but the people he knew were neutral looked more on the fence than ever.

"It's working, isn't it? Mr. Potter? Isn't it?" he heard Lisa's mum ask hopefully from Nicholas's other side. Harry instinctively turned to reply, only to see his guardian already whispering at her and reassuring her.

'Of course,' he realized, mentally chiding himself for letting the essential little fact slip his mind. Nicholas was known to the public as Nick Potter after all.

Turning back to the court proceedings, Harry dared not feel more than half optimistic as he watched Dumbledore yield the floor to Mulciber. This had been their last chance to convince as many people as possible. Dumbledore had done good work, presenting their side well and clearly, and this entire argument, coupled with Dumbledore's influence over the more progressive side would give them a fairly decent chance to win. Only if the Prosecution didn't have anything big.

It was a pretty fucking big 'if'.

Mulciber swept into the center just as the Judge finished jotting down whatever he was writing on that roll of parchment on his desk and asked in his cold voice, "Is the Prosecution ready to present for the final time?"

"It most certainly is," he replied calmly, before taking a step back and turning his head to look up at the entire Wizengamot surrounding him.

"While the Defense spent the entirety of the last day trying to work out their next cock and bull theory to feed the honorable Court," Mulciber grandly said, "the Prosecution was spending time looking for the evidence against the obvious culprit here. And if her guilt wasn't plenty obvious by the fact that she is a _Parseltongue_ -"

"Objection!" Dumbledore interrupted, and Harry knew why. Parseltongue was something that Mulciber was trying really hard to push, and letting him do that wasn't a smart move at all. The Headmaster added, "Even if Miss Turpin was a natural Parseltongue, a lot of great wizards were Parseltongues long before Lord Voldemort came along and sullied their kinds' name. It is an ability they are born with, and it is not one's fault for being one."

"He shouldn't have done that," Harry suddenly heard from beside him over the panicky squeaks that rang around the Hall at the mention of Voldemort's name. Much to his surprise, Nicholas's tone was disapproving.

He was about to ask what he meant, but the question answered itself.

"Objection denied!" the Judge barked angrily, "Her Parseltongue abilities are relevant to the case. And please try to keep the sensibilities of the people in mind when you utter that name, Albus. Some of us have lost _family_ to him."

Dumbledore stared Judge Barnes for a second before nodding.

Mulciber gave Dumbledore a dirty look before he cleared his throat, "As I was saying before I got interrupted, we have collected important evidence for the court in the form of a witness. However, the circumstances surrounding this witness are a bit…unusual. To further explain I would like to ask Healer Motwani of St Mungo's Hospital to take the stand."

The judged nodded his agreement, and a rather swell man in white robes made his way over to the witness stand.

"Healer Motwani," Mulciber said politely once the man had taken the stand, "Would you please explain the case of Mr. Borgin in its entirety to the court?"

"Of course. Marasmus Borgin was arrested and found guilty of buying and trading Class-A Non Tradable items back in October, and was sentenced to six months of Azkaban," the man said as Mulciber handed what was presumably the court records of the man's conviction up to the Judge's bench, "Two weeks ago, he was found in a right state in his Azkaban cell, screaming with pain in his sleep as he tried to gouge his eyeballs out."

"And what happened next?" Mulciber asked worriedly, though Harry knew that the concern in his voice was for nothing but dramatic effect.

"Well, of course, good sir," Motwani said, inflating his already bulging chest, "He was knocked out and rushed right to St Mungo's. He almost died from the pain, but our people are the best around, and we managed to save him. He woke up a week ago and kept insisting that he wanted to talk to the Aurors and that a 'little girl' had Obliviated him.

"What did the staff at the Hospital do when he said that?" Mulciber asked, ignoring the hush that fell at the mention of the 'little girl'.

"Nothing at all of course," Motwani replied, "We thought the bloke had gone mad! It wasn't until we found out that Miss Turpin being prosecuted for all this that we thought to contact the authorities. He recognized her face from the paper you see. It was mighty suspicious. So we tested him for Obliviation, and sure enough, he was Obliviated!"

" _Was_?" Mulciber asked, laying the act on so thick that Harry was left wondering why the man hadn't run away to Hollywood and spared him all the headache. The Wizengamot crowd was eating it up though, and the significance of the word left them leaning in for more.

"Oh yes," the Healer replied with wide eyes, "Was. Turns out, the man had done some right strange stuff to his magic, which reacted badly with the Dementors' effect and put him under _so_ much pain that the Obliviate on his mind just shattered."

The whole courtroom erupted in a loud buzz.

Harry was left shell-shocked before he immediately pulled up the necessary window to confirm what had just happened.

 **Obliviate/Obliviatus Obscura Revealus**

 **This spell is used to erase the memory of the subject. If the user has a mind arts level of 5 or above, he can rewrite a fake memory above that erased memory. Counter Obliviatus Obscura Revealus can remove the obliviation by causing an extreme amount of pain to the subject.**

 **-80 MP per use**

 _Extreme amount of pain_.

That was the key. That was how Borgin's Obliviate broke.

There was no _known_ way to counter the memory charm. The counterspell was something that wasn't known to the Wizarding World at wide. It was something that Harry knew exclusively. But what the Wizengamot had just witnessed was a Healer describing the _first_ public reversal of the Memory Charm. Ever.

And it had happened by _accident_.

Mulciber swept over to the center of the floor and continued on, "Mr. Borgin made contact with the Prosecution yesterday, and we spent our time working out a deal. A lesser sentence in exchange for him agreeing to take Veritaserum and testify to the court about what happened to his shop and how his partner Caractacus Burke died. His testimony, I assure you honored Wizengamot members, is shocking."

Looking right at the Judge, he said, "The witness has agreed to take Veritaserum, and as such, no vote is necessary. Permission to bring forth the witness for a Veritaserum testimony your Honor?"

"Granted. Aide, call for the Court Administerer. Court Scribe, take note that the following testimony will be said under the willing influence of Veritaserum," Judge Barnes ordered, sending an aide running through the side door.

It was a testament to how tense the entire room was that not a single sound was made in the time when the weak looking bearded middle-aged man was escorted by two burly Aurors into the room and to the witness stand. The hooded figure of the Veritaserum Administerer appeared soon after that, carrying a small vial of truth potion in his hand.

Borgin willingly showed his tongue as the Administerer dropped three drops onto it, before his shoulders slowly slumped. The Administerer peered at the man's face.

For a naive second, Harry dared hope that the serum wasn't going to work.

His hopes, however, were dashed when the hooded man looked up at the Judge and said, "It is done," before gliding swiftly into the sidelines. A victorious smile flashed across Mulciber's face before he quickly strode over to the witness stand and immediately started asking questions.

"What is your name?"

"Marasmus Borgin," was the flat reply.

"What is your relationship with Caractacus Burke?" Mulciber asked, getting into the actual questions.

"The man was my business partner. He founded Borgin and Burkes back in the 1800s and helped my father and then me run it till he passed away."

Mulciber nodded, plastic sympathy oozing out of his expression, "It was recorded that he died in the Knockturn Alley fire back in the summer. But that isn't the truth is it?"

"No."

"Then how _did_ your dear partner die, Marasmus? Tell the court everything."

And Borgin obeyed.

He spoke of how a hooded little girl came to the shop, asking for potion ingredients so Dark and illegal that they would make everyday wizards retch with disgust. Of how his partner told her to get out. To leave and never come back again.

He told them of the bone-chillingly cold voice of the girl as she haggled with him, and how Burke angrily grabbed the girl's arm. He described in vivid detail the nightmarish screams that followed from the man he had known his entire life, and how even those screams; that gave him the dubious relief of knowing that his partner was alive as he trembled behind the counter; were silenced with two simple words from that girl's mouth.

He spoke in the same flat voice of how he was forced to get her all she wanted, how his hands trembled as he handed everything to her before she wiped his mind and knocked him unconscious.

And how the next morning, all there was left was ashes.

There was only silence after Borgin finished talking.

Harry's mind was filled with all kinds of horror. Horror at what Lisa had been through, horror at the extents Voldemort could go to, horror at the fact that their defense was probably not going to stand up to this…

"And do you recognize that girl Marasmus?" Mulciber asked quietly.

"I do. It was the girl who is standing trial. It was Lisa Turpin."

Mulciber let that sentence hang in the air before he turned to the Judge, and quietly said, "Lisa Turpin is guilty. I, therefore, demand that she be brought to justice for all her crimes. The Prosecution rests the case, your Honor."

The Judge looked at the Prosecutor for a second, before turning to Dumbledore and asking, "Does the Defense have any questions for Mr. Borgin?"

"It does."

"Go ahead then," the Judge approved.

Dumbledore swept forward towards the witness stand, immediately asking with an urgent tone in his voice, "At any point during those events, did you see Miss Turpin's eyes?"

"I did."

"And what color were they?" he asked. A wave of curious mutterings spread through the crowd.

"Red. Bright red."

Dumbledore turned to look up at the Wizengamot around him.

"Let it be noted that Miss Turpin's eyes are brown in color and that changing of the eye color into an unusual shade of color is the _primary_ symptom of possession. This more than _anything else_ proves that Miss Turpin was possessed. Do not let an innocent be punished for the crimes of the guilty. The Defence rests the case as well your Honor."

Silence hung in the courtroom as the Judge picked up his quill and noted down some more things on his parchment.

Harry turned to look at Nicholas, who was leaning back with a decidedly proud smile on his face. Harry didn't blame him for it. He was having trouble containing his joy himself.

Dumbledore, the bloody genius that he was, had gotten the last word in and managed to take one of the most _devastating_ things the Prosecution had against them and turn it around to support their side.

The judge put his quill down and broke the silence, his cold voice echoing around the room.

"We have reached the end of today's proceedings. Both sides have presented their arguments for the final times, and both sides have rested their case. I would like to ask the esteemed members of Wizengamot to take this day to put aside their emotions and consider the evidence in its entirety, as well as decide on their vote. Tomorrow's convening of the court will be final, and we will have a verdict and a decision by the end of it no matter what. I wish to make sure that this is _perfectly_ clear."

He looked around at the people of Wizengamot, as if to hammer the point in, before he continued.

"You can collect a copy of the transcripts of the proceedings from the Court Scribe if you wish to peruse them. Remember to send in your votes by owl if you are unable to attend tomorrow. Please leave in an orderly fashion. Court dispersed!"

Ping!

 **Due to witnessing a trial to its completion, a skill has leveled up!**

 **Politics Lv- 5 (2%)**

 **This is your ability to maneuver in political situations by methods of persuasion, blackmail, guile, and manipulation. The higher the level, the more chance of success!**

 **(Lv of Lying + Lv of Bullshitting)% chance of success, less based on how extreme the motive is.**

Harry quickly waved that window away.

"THUNK!" sounded the gavel, and for all intents and purposes, it was over.

* * *

"So this is it?" Harry asked Nicholas as they stood and waited for the Wizengamot members to leave before they could head out of the courtroom.

"More or less. Wizengamot trials are almost always brief," Nicholas replied back in a hushed tone, "The one day break period before the voting is common for almost every criminal case. It is usually done as a formality. The official reason is to give the voters the time to consider the evidence, but it's mostly used by families to network and bribe and test the waters with their allies and enemies to make sure their vote matches the interests of those who benefit them."

"Is there anything that could go wrong here?" Harry worriedly asked, trying to make sure that Lisa's mum, who was standing on Nicholas's other side, wouldn't hear what they were talking about.

"I doubt it," was the quiet reply, "We have most of the Neutral side convinced, especially since Albus managed to get the last word in with that witness. Other than that, he will be meeting with as many progressive aligned members he can to try and convince them to vote for us. With both the Progressives and the Neutrals in the bag, we should have no problems winning."

That was both good and slightly uncomfortable to hear.

It was just like Dumbledore had said. It wasn't about the law, but about convincing a group of people to side with you. But at the same time, it was uncomfortable to know that there was such an obvious level of bias and corruption in a court of law.

'Oh well,' Harry thought with a sigh. That was a quest for another day.

For now, he was just glad that this whole mess was almost over. It was time to head back home, kick loose, and harass Perenelle for some cake.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Harass Perenelle for some cake.**

 **Rewards,**

 **Cake**

 **Failure,**

 **No cake**

 **YES/NO?**

Finally. A nice quest.

With a smile, Harry pressed yes and followed Nicholas and Lisa's mum as they followed the last Wizengamot member out of the courtroom and up the stairs, before heading up the Department of Mysteries hallway towards the elevator that had a massive crowd in front of it.

They joined the group of plum robed Wizengamot members in waiting for the next elevator, Harry trying to ignore the glances and looks towards him.

A thin plum robed witch with horn-rimmed glasses and greying hair pushed her way through the crowd over to where they were standing, before grabbing Lisa's mum in a tight hug.

"Oh Margaret," she said into the woman's shoulder, "Don't you worry darling. I'm sure little Lisa will be out and about in no time. Don't you worry."

"Thank you Esther," Lisa's mum replied gratefully, hugging back before they separated, "Do you need me to come in today?"

Esther nodded apologetically, holding onto her witch's hat lest it fall off, "You know how it is. Ever since the guard from Azkaban reported this morning that Sirius Black had escaped somehow, it has all been outright chaos. We need all hands on deck to keep those Prophet people from stealing all the documents from the archives."

Sirius Black.

The name had been splattered across the newspapers all morning, with headlines like _'Back in Black!'_ and _'Escape from Azkaban!'_ filling up the front page of the Prophet. Harry had heard the name mentioned a few times in the stories he had heard from people about his father, but he hadn't ever thought to look for the man.

"This is Nick Potter." Mrs. Turpin said, dragging Harry's attention back to the present as she introduced them to Esther, "And you know who the young man is."

"Of course I do," Esther said, shaking first Nicholas's then Harry's hand, "Esther McGoogly at your service, gents. I run the Ministry Archives and Library. Margaret here works under my supervision."

"Good to meet you ma'am," Harry said as he shook her hand.

"Likewise young man. Likewise," She said, before her eyes widened as a light bulb seemed to go off in her head, "You know what? You should come down to the Archives sometime. A lot of the pictures in your parent's house were taken by the DMLE as evidence after what happened all those years ago. Nobody's needing them anymore, so you might as well come take them. It's only right that you have them back."

Harry's eyes widened, but before he could do more than look at Nicholas, a loud clang and clank sounded, the elevator once again shuddered to place, and they were carried along with the crowd as they entered the cramped elevator. The grills closed in, and the elevator creaked threateningly, filled well past its safety limit as they headed down.

The next two minutes had to have been amongst the most unpleasant in Harry's entire life.

For the first minute, Harry cursed his stupidly short height as he was squashed in between three plump men from the back and both sides and had to stand with his face in another one's behind, frantically praying to whatever deity that existed that the man in front of him wouldn't develop sudden flatulence issues.

Halfway through the ride, the elevator stopped and quite a few people emptied out.

But before Harry could even take a breath of fresh air, a wizard holding a large Crup by his side entered the elevator and decided that the spot in front of Harry would be a fantastic place to stand. Harry spent the next minute getting repeatedly smacked in the face by the Crup's wagging tail and glaring angrily at Nicholas as the old man sniggered away mercilessly from the corner he was standing in.

When he finally escaped the elevator out into the Atrium's open-air he propped his hands on his knees as he took deep heaving breaths, not giving a rat's arse about the people who stopped to stare amusedly at him.

Ping!

 **Due to going through the smacktastic elevator, take a pity point. Take +1 to Vit!**

"Are you alright Harry?" he heard Nicholas ask before he looked up to see him standing with a concerned looking Mrs. Turpin.

" _No_ "

Nicholas turned to Mrs. Turpin, "He's alright. Why don't you go finish up your work and get some rest? Tomorrow will be a difficult day."

Mrs. Turpin nodded, before turning to Harry with a grateful smile, "Thank you for believing in my Lisa Harry. You and Nick both. Your…"

She looked to Nicholas wonderingly. Harry picking up on it, shot Nicholas a glare and promptly replied, "I call him Grandpa Nefario."

She gave a chuckle, before continuing, "Your…guardian really helped me get through this yesterday's trial, and you helped Professor Dumbledore defend Lisa. No matter what happens tomorrow, I'm grateful."

She bent down and pulled him into a hug. Harry, not knowing what to do, awkwardly patted her back, trying to keep himself from saying 'there-there' out loud.

"Oh, and just like Esther said," she said after she pulled back, "You can come along down to the archives anytime you want and take those pictures back. For now, you'll have to excuse me though. I have to go."

And with that, she left, hurriedly walking away as she dissolved into the hustling and bustling crowd.

"Grandpa Nefario? Really Harry?" Nicholas asked from beside him.

"You are a _really_ old man who has a secret identity and collects _porn_ magazines as a hobby. It fits."

"…They aren't always porn."

"Yes, they are," Harry corrected before he turned and looked up at Nicholas, who was standing with his hands folded behind his back, "Can I go down to the archives and get those photos of my parents?"

Nicholas looked at him weirdly for a second, before he pulled out his wand and tapped his head, casting what knew to be a small disguise onto him to hide his scar.

"Just remember to Floo back soon. Molly Weasley has invited us over for dinner," he said, and upon getting a nod back, turned and headed out towards the Floos outside the Atrium, leaving Harry to his own devices.

Harry watched him go for a second before he made a beeline to the small door towards the side with 'Stairs' marked on it.

Fuck the elevators.

Contrary to the last time he had been here, the stairwell up to Level Three actually had people in it. A man was using a brush and a bucket of _Stickly Stickler's Sticky Superglue_ to plaster posters onto the walls.

' ** _HAVE YOU SEEN THIS MAN!_** ' blared the large headline, with warnings like ' _APPROACH WITH EXTREME CAUTION_ ' and ' _DO NOT ATTEMPT TO ENGAGE THIS MAN_ ' written in bold underneath it, followed by notes written in smaller font like ' _Any information shall be duly rewarded_ ' and ' _Notify Ministry of Magic immediately_ '.

Harry made his way up the stairwell to where the worker was pasting the poster, he paused to look at the man's face in the photo, peering at the shadowed eyes. The man had beyond the pale skin and looked more like a rabid animal than anything else in the photo with his matted hair and filthy clothes.

This, according to the morning's newspaper, was the man that was rumored to be Voldemort's right-hand man and had murdered _thirteen_ people with a single curse, and this was the man who had gone to school with his father.

What had happened? How had someone his father used to be friends with ended up like this?

Pushing those thoughts out of his mind, Harry headed up the stairs to Level Three, where the Library and archives were located. Pushing open the stairwell door, Harry let himself into the floor before entering the library doors.

In the librarian's desk sat the familiar Esther McGoogly, whose face lit up as soon as she saw Harry enter. Apparently, Nicholas's simple disguise didn't fool the aging lady.

"Harry!" she said as she waved him over, "Come to take the photographs have you?"

"If it's alright with you ma'am,"

"Of course, of course," She said, waving away his concerns, "Just head over into the archives section will you? Everything is ordered by date in there, and you'll have no trouble finding the files yourself. I'm afraid you're going to have to show yourself around lad. I can't really spare anyone right now."

"That's no problem at all. I'll find my way," Harry assured her and headed into the archives section.

The archives sections were split into five wall-sized shelves, with all the cases arranged chronologically. Something that was recent could be found in the first shelf, but something from a long time past like Harry's case would be placed in one of the other four shelves depending on how much time had passed since the case's closing.

Harry made his way straight to the third shelf, which had a sign with _'1980-1990'_ on top of it.

There were a couple of Aurors in there, looking through case files. Harry weaved his way through them, trying to remain quiet and unnoticed as he headed to the back part of the shelf.

The 1991 section was the thickest section in the entire shelf, probably due to all the trials that had happened after the first Wizarding War. But Harry had no trouble at all finding the file he was looking for. There it was, in a red cover contrary to the plain ones that contained the other files, making it fairly easy to pick out.

When he reached to pull it out, Harry was surprised to see that his hands were trembling a bit. He had heard stories of his parent's life before…he had used them to meticulously handcraft this perfect little image of them in his head as they were in life. Seeking memories of his parents that he never really had.

But this…this was real. This was their death. Something Harry always tried to avoid thinking about.

Trying to keep the apprehensive feeling out of his gut, Harry pulled out the file, and with still trembling hands, opened the cover.

Thankfully, the first thing wasn't a picture of his parents' bodies as he had feared it would be. Instead, what greeted him was a small stack of about six pictures, all of which were of him and his parents. There was one of them standing proudly, holding something that looked like a deflated football in their hands.

It took Harry a second to realize that the deflated football was actually an infant him.

The next three were of him with his mum, with him looking a bit bigger and plumper each time. The one after that was of him on his dad's shoulders, and the last one was a magical picture of him riding a toy broom at full speed right into his dad's gut. The cameraman, presumably his mum, had managed to catch the exact moment he had made an impact, and the comedically scrunched up expression on his dad's face was caught in all his glory.

Harry picked up the photographs and stuffed them into his pocket before he looked back to the file and hesitated. He'd found the pictures he had been looking for. He could just close the file and leave now. There was no reason to bring back bad memories. No reason to look further in.

And yet, as much as he wished to forever live in the beautiful lie of an illusion he'd crafted of his parents' lives, their death was the painful truth. So he turned the page, and there they were. On one side was a picture of his dad, slumped lifelessly against a drawer, and on the other was his mum. She looked more peaceful, her red hair flaring gently around her almost as if she was lost in a gentle sleep, just waiting to be shaken awake.

Neither of the pictures moved.

Harry turned the page over, not wanting to look at the pictures anymore. Whereas the thoughts and memories of his parents' lives kept him warm every single day, he found no comfort in death.

The next three pages contained a short statement from the Wizengamot and lots of cut-out articles whose headlines triumphantly declared Voldemort's vanquish, each presenting their own slightly different version of what had gone on in that fateful night. One article that smelt more like propaganda than anything else spoke of how Harry, born with true magic's blessing, was able to reject Voldemort's spells. Another one spoke of how Lily Potter dabbled in dark magic, using fire to fight fire. As the dates on the articles grew, the tabloids eventually reached the same conclusion about Harry somehow reflecting the Killing Curse.

The very last page contained three handwritten notes.

The first one was about Harry.

 _Harry James Potter has been placed with his closest blood relatives as per the Wilkinson's Custodian Act of 1674._

The second one was, much to his surprise, the Department of Mysteries.

 _Investigation by the Dept. of Mysteries into the reasons behind the survival of Harry Potter have been put to a stop by executive orders from the Ministry seconded by a Wizengamot vote._

But the third one was the most unsettling one.

 _RELATED TRIAL: Sirius Black and Peter Pettigrew were known to be close family friends to the Potters, and his case is related heavily to this one. Trainee Aurors studying this case are recommended to look for Protected File #C34 and peruse it to gain a more complete picture of the story._

Harry closed the file with an uncomfortable feeling between anger and morbid curiosity. So Sirius Black had remained friends with his father after Hogwarts, but had betrayed them and turned for the other side? There had to be more to this. What had happened?

Putting the file back into its place in the shelf, Harry scoured the section of the shelf, looking through as many case files as he could in his search for anything that had C34 written on it. It was a few minutes before he found it in the bottommost section of the shelf, a thin little file lodged behind a fat file on a case about whether wearing underwear beneath your robes should be compulsory or not.

Deciding to not look into that particular case, Harry reached out to pull out the C34 file, only to have his hand bounce off.

'That must be what it means by it being a Protected File. It's warded,' Harry realized, before immediately activating Runic Burnout.

 **Runic Burnout Lv-6 (21%)**

 **A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. A common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.**

 **Do you wish to use it on: Advanced Locking Ward?**

 **YES/NO**

Harry burned a small flame in his hand to keep the mana flowing and pressed yes. A small burst of mana washed his senses, and Harry knew that the ward was gone.

He quickly pulled the file open and started looking at what was in there.

The first page was a yellow page with a warning on it.

 _WARNING!_

 _This file is marked as restricted by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. If you are a civilian and have encountered this file, please return it to the nearest Ministry official immediately._

Harry didn't even think before turning the page, and thus was completely caught off guard by a large picture of a finger with a bloody stump on the next page.

File #C34 was _very_ lucky that Harry hadn't eaten a large breakfast that morning.

Quickly turning the picture away, Harry read through the DMLE report on the next page.

 ** _DMLE REPORT: FINAL_**

 _Sirius Black was arrested on 1 November 1981 after he was found laughing madly surrounded by 12 dead muggles and 1 dead wizard named Peter Pettigrew. What follows is the clearest possible recounting of the events leading up to that._

 _James and Lily Potter were hiding from You-Know-Who using a powerful concealment charm called the Fidelius. The Potters chose Sirius Black, a close friend, as their Secret-keeper. Barely a week later, he betrayed the Secret to You-Know-Who._

 _It is speculated that Black was tired of his double-agent role, and was ready to declare his open support for You-Know-Who. However, due to infant Harry Potter mysteriously vanquishing his master, Black was left with no choice but to run._

 _Witness Rubeus Hagrid placed Black on the scene of the Potter Incident, where Black attempted to take the infant Potter from him. Having failed in his attempt to do so, Black ditched his flying motorbike, presumably because it was too easy to trace, and escaped._

 _Peter Pettigrew, another close friend of the Potters went after Black himself out of rage. Muggle eyewitnesses tell of how the man confronted Black, throwing angry accusations at him. Witnesses say that he went for his wand, but was too slow. He was blown to smithereens, leaving behind a giant crater and twelve dead muggles as casualties._

The next page was just a bunch of articles, and that was the end of the file.

And even as a fiery burst of hatred flowed through Harry, tinting his vision red, he had noticed that something was off.

Inside every single one of the files he had looked through in his search for #C34, there was _always_ a Wizengamot document of some sort. Either it was a short statement about the result of the hearing, or it was a long transcript of the trial that was held, but there was always, _without fail,_ a document that talked about the Trial.

File #C34 had none.

Ping!

 **For making an accurate Observation, take +1 to Int!**

And so, Harry was left with a feeling of unrest, knowing that something was off, but not knowing quite what.

Putting the file back into the spot where he had pulled it out from, he patted his pocket to make sure he still had the photos he was supposed to take before heading out of the shelves and towards the Librarian's desk, where Esther McGoogly still sat, peering through her horn-rimmed glasses at a piece of parchment.

"Found your way alright Harry?" she asked, seeing Harry approach, "You were in there for a while."

"I did ma'am. Thank you," Harry said, before pulling out the half dozen pictures he had taken and handing them to her, "I took these ones from the file."

Madam McGoogly took the pictures, pulled out a large binder before she opened it and scribbled something down into it. She looked through the photographs as she made notes in the binder, chuckling fondly at the photo of Harry driving his broom into his father before handing the set back to Harry.

"Thank you ma'am," He said, just as the Library door opened behind him and someone walked in, accompanied with the sound of boots clip-clopping loudly. Harry looked to see who it was and frowned.

It was the Lord Wentworth Wright chap whom he had encountered at the Malfoy Ball and had seen sitting in the shadows in Wizengamot.

"I'll be in the archives Esther," the man said, not even looking at the Librarian as he headed in towards the archives. Harry was pretty sure the man hadn't even noticed him.

Remembering how he was curious about why the man looked so familiar back when he had first encountered him, Harry quickly cast an Observe at the man's vanishing back. And this time, the Observe did show relevant information.

 **Wentworth Wright**

 **(Relationship Meter: 0%)**

 **Lv-53**

 **HP-15000/15000**

 **MP-8800/8800**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-20**

 **Vit-21**

 **Dex-34**

 **Int-41**

 **Wis-33**

 **Luc-8**

 **Wentworth Wright is a wizard and a powerful member of Wizengamot. He practices traditionalistic leaning politics. He believed his son Johnathon to be dead, only to find out recently that he'd been turned into a werewolf. He has a dead grandson, who he recently learned about, and has made it his life's purpose to bring who he believes to be her killer to justice.**

 **He is feeling worried and troubled about tomorrow's trial result.**

 **He thinks Harry is a growing power but is resentful of him because Harry is coming in the way of him using his political power to convict the killer of his grandson.**

The realization of what he was looking at hit Harry like a slap in the face, and he was left frozen with shock.

"Harry?" Madam McGoogly asked worriedly, having noticed Harry freeze up, "Are you alright?"

Hearing that broke Harry out of his daze. He quickly assured her that he was alright, and promptly left the library, still reeling from shock.

* * *

Harry had immediately returned back home after that, and it had taken him the entire afternoon to fully comprehend the information that Observe had given him.

Not only had he found the pureblood Lord who was Dean's grandfather and the father of the man he had accidentally killed all that time ago, but was also the man who was influencing the trial from the shadows to streamline it against Lisa.

There was a nightmare worth of stuff in just that one statement that set Harry on the fence.

Regardless, Harry had immediately sent off a short note to Dumbledore using the Flamel's owl, seeing as Hedwig still had a couple of days before she'd be back to travel worthy.

 _Professor,_

 _Dean once mentioned to me that his father's name was Johnathon Wright and that he was a pureblood from an old family. Today at the Ministry, I saw a Wizengamot member whose name was Wentworth Wright. It might be a coincidence, but I thought best to let you know in case it was relevant._

 _Harry Potter_

The owl must have caught Dumbledore before he had left the Ministry because his replying letter came within the hour.

 _Dear Harry,_

 _Thank you for letting me know. That is indeed vital information, and I am taking appropriate steps to counter it._

 _Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore_

Harry felt slightly better after that reply, having made sure that his own moral dilemmas wouldn't in any way be screwing with Lisa's chances of getting out of that mess of a trial.

With that particular load off his chest and the evening fast approaching, he had gotten ready and headed out with Nicholas and Perenelle for dinner at the Burrow.

The dinner was something Mrs. Weasley had organized because she wanted to celebrate Hermione finally getting out of the hospital. The entire Weasley family; except for Charlie and Bill; were all there, along with all of the Grangers and now all the Potters.

They had all gathered up nice and cozy around the dining table, Perenelle and Nicholas fitting in surprisingly well with a group that was young enough to be their great-grandkids and great-great-grandkids. They talked about this and that, and every time the topic strayed into any uncomfortable territory, the Weasley twins either pulled out some new nifty toy or acted all goofy, diffusing the tension. Ron was feeling more like his usual self, scarfing down his chunk of the huge meat pie Mrs. Weasley had cooked up so fast that Harry was afraid he'd barf, Hermione was cracking smiles left and right as she admonished Ron, and even Ginny had come out of her shell a bit as she joked around with Fred and George.

It was like a little happy bubble that Harry found himself in, insulated from all the bad things that had been happening. He did his best to enjoy it as much as he could.

After the dinner wrapped up, Hermione and Mrs. Granger found themselves in a conversation with Perenelle about how medicine differed in the magical and muggle worlds with Mrs. Weasley joining in for good measure, Fred and George decided to pick on Percy, Ron headed off to the bathroom to take a much-needed dump, and Harry was left with Mr. Weasley and Nicholas.

"So you are telling me that everything is made up of _infinitely tiny little balls_ and that Muggles managed to break up those little balls into even tinier little balls? Unbelievable!" Mr. Weasley disbelievingly exclaimed.

"To put it very basically, yes," Nicholas replied with a sigh as he rubbed his temple.

Deciding to drop the subject of how batteries worked, no doubt due to Nicholas's overly complicated explanations involving theories about gaseous state and molecular composition, Mr. Weasley changed the topic of conversation, "I heard from people around the DMLE that the trial got a bit heated today."

"It did, but I think that the good Professor managed to save us quite well. There were a few rough moments here and there…"

Harry sighed. A discussion on the proceedings of today's trial was coming, and he wanted no part of it.

"I'll just be outside in the yard if that's alright Mr. Weasley."

Getting a nod, Harry headed around the kitchen and out of the back door, stepping out into the moonlit yard which opened up into the massive orchard behind the Burrow.

Closing the door behind him, Harry stepped down to sit on the steps.

The thoughts that he had been suppressing all evening started to rise up in him, seemingly unaffected by Gamer's Mind as they mocked and chided him.

' _…All those families lost people because of your decision…'_

' _…Lisa is suffering in a Ministry cell, cold and alone, what right do you have to make merry…'_

' _…Forgotten about your dead friend already have you…'_

"Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeee"

A shrill and distant noise suddenly rang out, snapping Harry right out of his thoughts.

His eyes snapped to where the sound had come from, watching with wide eyes as the silhouette of a girl wearing an abnormally tall witch's hat riding a broom flashed across the moon.

The back door of the Burrow slammed open behind him, and Ginny's voice rang out loud and clear, " _MUM!_ Floo call Mr. Lovegood! Luna stole his broom! Again!"

Harry looked over his shoulder. Ginny, who had been the one to open the door, hadn't noticed him yet. She turned around, looked up at what was apparently the flying Luna with a tired smile, looked down, saw him, and promptly decided to vocally impersonate a dying rat.

Before she could run away, or worse, squeak, even more, Harry decided to speak up, "Is that actually Luna Lovegood?"

The focus of replying to a question was apparently enough to snap Ginny partly out of whatever tizzy she went into every time she saw Harry.

"Y-yes," she replied, "Sh-she lives nearby, and does that sometimes."

"Fly around squealing in the dead of night with a really large hat on?" Harry asked, unable to keep some of his incredulity from slipping into his voice.

"She's just a bit different," Ginny said, her stutter vanishing as her tone became defensive.

"I didn't mean anything by that," Harry said, backtracking, "I know she's…different is indeed the word I suppose. I've met her after all. I was just asking if she does this often."

The redhead weighed his words carefully, before she hesitantly nodded, "Her dad keeps forgetting to lock their broom cupboard, and she likes to fly at night, so…"

"Helloooooooooooo Mr. Tooooaaaaadingeeeer" came the distant voice, this time clearly distinguishable as Luna's as her flying silhouette did a large loop in the sky, her witch's hat almost falling off. Harry's mouth fell open, and his left eye decided that it needed a good twitch.

"What is she _saying_?" Ginny muttered incredulously.

"No idea. None. Absolutely none."

She looked at him strangely for a second, probably wondering why he had suddenly developed sweat, before asking, "Are you alright? Why are you sitting out here?"

Harry looked at her, and for a fleeting moment debated telling her about all that plagued his mind. Of all the secrets and dilemmas he was dealing with. To let her know that the Harry Potter she idolized never made it to Hogwarts. That he wasn't someone who deserved to be looked up to.

The moment was fleeting though, and he wasn't so much of a crybaby that he would spill his guts to an eleven-year-old girl who was prone to having fits whenever she saw him, so he instead replied with something that was half true, "I'm fine. I was just worried about the trial results tomorrow. Thinking about if I could've done anything more to help Lisa."

Ginny considered him for a second, before asking, "You did your best didn't you?"

He nodded.

"Then you have nothing to feel bad about. That's what Mum always says."

She smiled at him, her face flushing red as a tomato as Harry smiled back before she quickly stepped back into the house and closed the door behind her.

Harry sat there for a few more seconds, oddly enough feeling like Ginny had answered more questions than she knew she had.

He _had_ done his best. And maybe sometimes it was just that simple.

He looked at his hands.

Almost without even a single thought, his magic started to pool at his fingertips, flowing fluidly through his body to the spot Harry commanded it to go. The tips of his fingers started glowing brightly from the inside, the light pulsating rhythmically with the beat of his pulse. Closing his hands into a fist so that his fingertips brimming with mana were touching his palms, Harry muttered under his breath, "Healing Touch."

And just like that, the mana left his fingertips and shot through his arms, leaving a pleasant tingle wherever his cuts were, before spreading through his back and doing the same with the injuries he had there.

In front of his eyes, his scars slowly faded away, and the few cuts that still had scabs fully healed over, leaving unblemished skin behind.

Harry looked up at the moon that shone brightly down upon the entire orchard and the dubiously sane girl that was flying around above the orchard doing stupidly dangerous aerial maneuvers.

It was a beautiful night.

* * *

"Are you sure about this," the woman asked as she aimed her wand at the man kneeling on the floor of their bedroom.

"I am."

"Is this even necessary?" the woman's voice was concerned.

"You know it is," the man snapped back, "The Dark memory spell I cast on myself broke weeks ago when I saw the girl in person. That was the trigger I'd set for it breaking, and it worked seamlessly as usual. But there are still fragments missing. A thought here, a chunk there that's _just_ out of my reach. I _know_ I have been Obliviated."

"And this is your way of getting those memories back? Torturing yourself?"

"I know what the Healer said in the court. Pain was what broke the seal on Borgin's memories. It is what will break the one on mine."

"And if it doesn't?"

A smirk split the man's face, but it held no mirth, "It is not as if pain is a stranger to me. It's just a long lost friend."

"If you say so," she said hesitantly, " _Crucio!_ "

Hoarse screams rang out across the Malfoy Manor. A few bedrooms away, shielded from the sounds of the world around him by muffling charms, Draco Malfoy slept on peacefully.

* * *

 **This chapter was 10,000 words long and took ages to edit. Be nice to my sore fingers and leave a review, will ya? Tell me what you thought of Harry discovering that something is wrong with Sirius's case? I'd like to think I did better than many fics do when they just say that Harry discovered he didn't have a trial from the goblines and then started trusting this stranger completely. Bit more detailed, I'd say. Furthermore, Malfoy fucking wised up to Harry's Obliviation as soon as he heard about Burke's Obliviation being broken. So he's back to being a dangerous player on the field. Lemme know what you thought of all that.**


	38. Book-II:A Strange Day

Chapter 18:

The next morning was slightly more relaxed in the Flamel apartment.

Nicholas and Perenelle were idly taking bites out of their toasts as they conversed with Mr. Fortescue, who lived a mere two doors away from their apartment and had come over for breakfast.

Harry, on the other hand, was lost in his own thoughts.

Late last night, Harry had decided not to tell Nicholas and Perenelle about Wright and his interference. It didn't seem right, but he needed to talk to the man before he told anyone else about him. It was a man whose son was dead because of him, and whose grandson was one of his best friends. He couldn't just ignore him. He owed him the truth about who killed Dean, whether he could convince him of Lisa's innocence or not.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Talk to Wentworth Wright and convince him of Lisa's innocence!**

 **Rewards,**

 **5,000 Exp**

 **2 stat points**

 **Failure,**

 **Lisa's conviction**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry pressed yes. Besides, Dumbledore _had_ said he would be able to handle Wright.

"Oh! Nick! Did I tell you about Sir Knucklehead Fudducker McSpazzatron?"

Mr. Fortescue's voice snapped Harry out of his thoughts and into the present, leaving him with a very odd set of questions in his mind.

Firstly, who was Sir Knucklehead Fudducker McSpazzatron?

Secondly, why did his parents hate him so much?

Thirdly, was there anything that could be done to save the poor chap from a lifetime of shame and ridicule?

In pursuit of answers to these questions, Harry decided that starting to pay attention to the conversation at the table would probably be the right thing to do.

"No you didn't Florean," Nicholas said politely, though it was plenty obvious by the twitch in his jaw that his thoughts weren't too far away from Harry's, "Who is that?"

Mr. Fortescue though, took no notice of that and jovially started his story, "Oh you have to hear it. Last night, after I had closed up the Parlor and locked up the doors. I was about to apparate home, but suddenly, I hear a whining noise behind me. I turn around, look for the sound, and find that it's coming from a small alleyway beside the Parlor. The first thought in my mind was that some hag had found its way out of Knockturn and into Diagon. So I pull out my wand and headed in. But there weren't any hags in there. Instead what I found was a giant heap of fur."

"Just fur?" Nicholas asked, leaning in curiously.

"Erm…It was a dog actually. A big black one."

"A dog with a heap of fur? Was it guarding it?"

"The dog _was_ the heap of fur,"

"That makes more sense. So what did you do after that?"

Mr. Fortescue looked at Nicholas weirdly, before replying, "Well...at first, I thought it was a Grim, and it scared the pants off of me, but when I looked closer, I realized it was just a dog freezing out in the January cold. Poor thing looked like death. Had its ribs sticking out, snow all over his matted fur, shivering like no tomorrow."

"Frostbite, malnourishment, fleas, possible heartworms," Perenelle muttered concernedly, "It sounds really bad. What did you do Florean?"

"Brought him home of course!" Mr. Fortescue exclaimed, "He looked like a grown-up version of the pup I used to have back when I was a kid, Seargent Barkowitz. I couldn't leave him out there to die. So I brought him home, warmed and fed him up, pulled out those Pet-medicine books out of storage and treated his fleas and heartworm, and even got him to sleep a bit."

"And he didn't bite you or anything?" Nicholas asked incredulously.

"Not at all. He was really well mannered. Did his business in the right place, didn't make a mess at all, did what he was told to. I reckon he might have been house trained before but his owner abandoned him or something."

"Is he still with you?" Perenelle asked.

"Oh yes. He was sleeping when I came over," Mr. Fortescue said, before using his napkin to wipe his mouth and stand up, "Speaking of which, I should probably head back. He must be awake now."

And with that, Mr. Fortescue shook Nicholas's and Perenelle's hands, picked up his hat from the table, and headed out.

Harry looked at the clock on the wall. It was almost eleven now, and if he wanted to find and talk to Wright before the Trial, then he'd have to leave now. Turning to Nicholas, he asked, "Is it alright if I head on to the Ministry straight from there?"

"Ministry?" Nicholas asked with a frown, "The Vote is happening at noon Harry. Why do you want to go now?"

"I…" Harry hesitated, before thinking up a simple enough lie, "I wanted to go down to the Archives again to look at my parents' files again."

Ping!

 **Lie Successful!**

Nicholas's face softened, and he nodded, "Alright. If you get lost or need help with something just ask anyone wearing a uniform. They'll help you. I will see you directly at the Trial."

"Thank you," Harry said, before quickly finishing up his toast, getting up, and heading upstairs to his room.

"Hedwig," he said as he closed the door behind him and turned to look at the phoenix perched on the golden perch, "I'll be gone to the Ministry for a while today. Maybe even till the evening. Will you need anything?"

Hedwig had started to recover from her Burning Day blues and started using the perch again, which was quite nice to see. Her feathers had almost fully grown back, except for the tiny patches on her wingtips and around her neck, and she was almost back to full size again.

" _Are you going to talk to that Wright person?_ " echoed Hedwig's voice in his mind.

"I am," he replied.

There was a moment's silence in which Harry opened his wardrobe and pulled out a robe and his old wizard's hat which had developed a rather droopy brim. The robe he put on, and the hat he stuffed into his Inventory in case he needed to stay a bit inconspicuous in a crowded area.

" _Can I come?_ "

Harry raised an eyebrow. Hedwig hadn't wanted to go out four days now. This was an unusual surprise, but not an unwelcome one, "Are you sure?"

" _I don't want you to be alone today,_ " she said concernedly.

Harry smiled at her, "I'm the one supposed to be taking care of you Hedwig, not the other way around."

" _You're an idiot if you still think that with the amount of trouble you get into Harry,_ " she said, her tone mocking.

"Shut up," Harry tossed back, before pulling the rim of his pocket open. Hedwig spread her wings and lifted off of her perch into the air, before diving straight into to Harry's robe pocket.

It was a good thing that Perenelle had lined all of his robe pockets with Undetectable Expansion Charms and the One-Way-Transparency charm that he had created back in his first year. Hedwig could easily fit in there as well as see clearly out of the pocket. Combining that with the fact that Hedwig could now talk to him mentally made the entire thing all the better.

As ready as he could be, Harry jogged off downstairs, said goodbye to his still eating guardians, and headed out of the apartment.

On the way to the tiny room off the corridor that contained the Floo, the only sound that Harry heard was the occasional loud bark, presumably from Mr. Fortescue's new pet Sir Knucklehead Fudducker McSpazzatron which, upon second thought, wasn't _that_ bad of a name.

For a dog.

Ducking into the Floo room, Harry handed the man in green robes a sickle, collected the Floo powder, and stepped into the fireplace.

" _Ministry of Magic!_ "

Barely a second of him and Hedwig passing through a blizzard of flitting lights later, he stepped out of one of the Ministry fireplaces just off the Atrium. Quickly pulling out the hat from his inventory and stuffing it onto his head in an effort to stay inconspicuous, Harry made a beeline for the Atrium. The wizard at the security desk was absent, which was why Harry simply jogged through the crowd towards the small door off to the side that led to the stairs.

The way up to Level Two, where all the Wizengamot offices were located, was thankfully empty, with the only people that Harry passed being a pair of peach robed witches, one of whom was complaining to the other about the Invisibility Task Force strike.

Harry briskly walked on and slipped into the Level Two doorway. Turning left, he headed into the massive corridor lined with doors that each led to a Wizengamot member's office whose name was engraved on the door. Dozens of purple paper airplanes that Harry knew to be Interdepartmental memos followed the same corridor as Harry, and as soon as they reached their destination doors, they unfolded themselves into flat paper and slipped under the gaps beneath.

It took him a while to find the office he was looking for, especially since it was quite far into the corridor.

 _Wentworth Alan Wright, Member of Wizengamot_

Harry took a deep breath. The chances of this going well were incredibly slim, which was why he needed to be prepared for anything and everything.

" _Are you alright? Do you still want to do this?_ " he heard Hedwig ask worriedly in his mind.

"I am," he said quietly in reply to both of her questions. He then took a deep breath, and steeling himself, knocked on the door three times.

"Come in."

Harry pushed the door open and stepped in before closing it behind. The room was spacious but sparse, with no decorations on the walls other than the fireplace, a bookshelf, torches for the light, and a single portrait of a middle-aged woman behind the big desk at the center of the room where Lord Wright sat.

"Mr. Potter. Can I help you?" Wright asked with a frown as he put down his quill.

There was no point in beating around the bush and Harry knew it, "Lord Wright. I…I wanted to talk to you about Dean."

If Harry would've blinked he would have missed the widening of the elderly man's eyes before he instantaneously schooled a politely curious expression back into place. "Isn't that the young man who was killed in the Chamber? I remember hearing he was your friend. I'm sorry for your loss. What can I do for you?"

Harry wasn't going to let him make this more difficult, "Please Lord Wright. I don't want to…I know he is your grandson."

Wright's face instantly lost expression, freezing into a stony gaze. The click of the office door's lock sliding into place sounded behind Harry.

"Do you? And however did you reach that conclusion?" Wright flatly asked, standing up from his seat and walking around the desk to lean against the front of it.

There was no other choice now than shouldering on, "Dean showed me the letters he got from your son. He told me about his father. His name was Johnathon Armin Wright. I looked up your son's name from the Ministry Archives. The connection was obvious,"

"And what is it that you want from me?"

Harry took a deep breath, before saying what needed to be said, "I know you've been trying to get Lisa convicted, and I wanted you to know that she is innocent."

The silence that followed hung in the air thick as butter.

"You know a lot more than you should Mr. Potter. And even further more than you understand," Wright finally said.

"I understand wanting revenge from your family's death," Harry replied, "I understand the anger. I understand the desperate need to get it out of you."

"You're _twelve_."

"I'm also someone who has lost his entire family, and now a friend," Harry's voice rose as he retorted, "I understand more than you think."

"I lost my son a decade ago," Wright spat at him, his mouth twisting with contempt. Harry had finally got through to him, "I had to watch my wife waste away in her grief. After spending an entire decade trying to fill my wounds, I had to tear open those scars again and find out that not only had my son been living life as a degenerate beast, but had died before I could find him again. And the messenger that came bearing that news was nothing other than my grandson's death. A grandson who I had never even known existed. Do you understand that Mr. Potter? Do you understand the pain of having your entire world ripped to shreds around you, and then after painstakingly stitching a _pathetic_ substitute for it back together, have it ripped apart yet again? Because if you do then you understand my actions _perfectly_."

Harry stared at the man, guilt and sympathy blending together into an uneasy feeling in his gut. It was a moment before he quietly replied, "Maybe I don't. I never really knew parents after all. But that doesn't change the fact that Lisa is innocent."

Wright sighed, his agitation slowly giving way to plain weariness.

"Mr. Potter. If you are going to spew that same nonsense about possession that Dumbledore is trying to feed the Wizengamot then you can save yourself the effort. That is a desperate effort by a desperate teacher who is too attached to his student to realize when that student has done something horrible, and I am in no way interested in it."

"Not even if I told you that Voldemort was involved?"

Wright froze. Harry knew he had his attention, "It was _him_. He was the one who possessed Lisa. He was the one who wanted to get a body back. That was what the potion was for."

"That is one hell of a far-fetched story Potter," Wright said unbelievingly, although his wide eyes and unflinching attention said otherwise. Somehow, Wright had already suspected something similar to what Harry was telling him.

"It's the truth," Harry said, pushing on, "Lucius Malfoy wanted to dispose of a dark artifact in his possession. A diary that held a memory…the spirit of Lord Voldemort. Somehow, he managed to slip the artifact to Lisa Turpin, who wrote in the diary, unknowingly feeding her magic to the spirit inside until it grew strong enough to possess her. He made her do all those horrible things. Throughout the entirety of this school year, he made her brew a potion to get his body back, using the petrifactions to get Dumbledore out of the school. And on the day of the Incident, he took her into the Chamber to use that potion. Dean managed to follow her in, and foiled his plan of using the potion."

Harry took another deep breath before continuing, "I came here today because I thought you deserved the truth about who killed Dean, and this is it. Whether you believe it or not is up to you."

Harry turned around, intending to leave.

He hadn't been sure coming into this office what the real purpose of this was. Dumbledore had countered Wright's influence and combined with the previous day's court proceedings, it was almost a sure thing that they were going to win. There was no need to convince Wright to change his mind. And yet something told him that he needed to do this. And now he had. He'd reached the door and was debating whether or not to blow the lock up when Wright's voice came.

"And how do you know all this?"

He turned around, facing Wright again. There was palpable uncertainty in his eyes.

Harry flatly replied, giving as much truth as he could, "When I went into the inner Chamber, Voldemort was still in her. He told me all that before he died, probably from some reaction that potion had, leaving Lisa unconscious."

Wright's eyes widened, "That is why you were late and weren't able to warn the school. The Dark Lord was stalling in his last moments. Delaying you."

A sharp spike of guilt ran through Harry's heart, which he immediately squashed down, "More or less."

Wright stared at him for a second, before he swiftly turned and walked back around his desk, leaning down to pull open a drawer from which he pulled out a letter. Opening it, he started reading through it fervently.

"I believe you," he finally said, closing the letter and looking Harry in the eye.

"You…believe me?" Harry unbelievingly said.

Wright nodded, "I do. Which is why I will give you this warning Mr. Potter. I am not the one making the moves anymore. As of this morning, a more powerful player has stepped in. Someone whose actions make sense only when seen in the context of your story."

It took a second for him to realize who it was.

"Malfoy…" Harry's voice was filled with dread. Borgin's memory restoration in the court must have tipped him off on how to break the memory charm that Harry had placed on him back in the summer.

"Indeed. As of this morning, Lucius Malfoy has sent dozens of these letters out," Wright said, holding up the letter in his hands, " mobilizing the _entire_ traditionalistic side. He has been calling in favors and using leverages left and right, doing everything he can to make the vote go against Turpin."

"Is that why-"

"Yes," Wright interrupted, "That is why I believe you. The only reason Malfoy would pull out all the stops to end Turpin is if he believed there was a significant threat to himself from Turpin's survival. Your story fits. If Turpin is allowed time to heal her mind, then her Veritaserum testimony would not only turn most of his allies against him, it would also land Lucius in Azkaban for life."

"I need to tell Dumbledore," Harry said, panic rising, "If he knows who he is up against then maybe he can stop it."

Wright was shaking his head before Harry even finished his sentence, "As far as Dumbledore's influence in the Wizengamot extends, Malfoy's extends greater. There are no two ways about it. You will lose the vote today. There is no legal way of saving Lisa Turpin now."

Panic was starting to set in, but even through that, Harry noticed something. Something about that last sentence was off.

"No…legal way?"

"You heard me," Wright said as he put the letter back into his, "Tell that to Dumbledore. What he does with that information is none of my business."

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Talk to Wentworth Wright and convince him of Lisa's innocence!**

 **Rewards,**

 **5,000 Exp**

 **2 stat points**

Behind Harry, the door lock clicked open.

"Now get out of my office."

* * *

Malfoy breaking the Obliviate was all kinds of bad, but it wasn't world-ending. A quick perusal of the memory of that day using Gamer's Mind had made sure that he hadn't compromised anything too bad. The only things he had used was Hydromancy and his own fists, neither of which could give any potentially dangerous information to Lucius.

He had gotten incredibly lucky, but Lisa hadn't. This had happened at the worst time for her.

After getting out of Wright's office, Harry had quickly found the nearest toilet and locked himself in a stall, wasting no time before writing out a quick letter to Dumbledore's office, telling him about Malfoy's involvement and how he had broken through the Obliviate Harry had cast on him as well as about Wright's ambiguous message.

He had sent it off with Hedwig, who had almost immediately come back with a short note clenched in her talons.

 _Stay where you are_

And so Harry stayed, putting down and sitting on the lid of the toilet seat as he asked Hedwig about the vague message.

"What was he doing when you found him?" Harry asked agitatedly for the third time. It had been over fifteen minutes, the smell of piss was getting to him, and from the sound of it, the bloke two stalls away was having a serious bout of explosive diarrhea.

" _For the last time Harry!_ " Hedwig exasperatedly replied from inside his pocket, " _He was writing something on his desk when I arrived. He took the letter from me immediately, and instantly after that wrote down the note I gave you and told me to head back and wait for Fawkes. Have a bit of patience!_ "

"Easy for you to say while you're inside a magical pocket where the stench can't get you," Harry grumbled.

Suddenly, a ball of fire burst into existence in the stall, badly startling Harry off balance, making him bang into the stall wall loudly.

"Oi! Keep it quiet in there mate! We're all tryin to take a quiet shit here!" explosive diarrhoea guy yelled from his stall. Harry ignored him as he reoriented himself back onto his seat. The ball of fire had coalesced into the shape of a familiar red plumed phoenix who was flapping his wings as he hovered mid-air.

"Fawkes!" he whispered urgently, "What happened? Why did Dumbledore tell us to stay here?"

" _Albus sends his apologies,_ " Fawkes replied, " _He wanted to talk to you alone and his office wasn't quite private enough._ "

"Because of the portraits?"

" _Indeed. Fortunately, he has found a suitable place. Grab my tail feathers and we will be on our way._ "

Harry nodded, before quickly standing up and grabbing Fawkes's tail feathers. For a short fleeting moment, fire enveloped his vision as the phoenix teleported him before it receded and Fawkes landed on his shoulder.

Harry looked around curiously. He was in a pure white circular room with no windows or doors. Dumbledore stood right across him on the other side of the room, clad in purple robes and wand held loosely in hand. Wondering where he really was, Harry Observed the room.

 **Room of Requirements**

 **Created by Rowena Ravenclaw, this room can transform itself into whatever the witch or wizard needs it to be at that moment. It cannot create food and has many limitations placed on it by its creator. Any item summoned or created in the room cannot be taken outside the room and it cannot summon living creatures. Its position on a ley-line nexus grants it almost unlimited potential otherwise.**

 **It only appears when the user is in great need of it, but can also be called for by walking three times in front of it and focusing on what is needed.**

 **Status: The Ley Line is temporarily blocked. (Time remaining on Block Spell: 1 hour)**

Just as Harry closed the Observe window with raised eyes, he heard Fawkes's voice echo in his mind.

" _I'm sorry Harry._ "

Dumbledore's wand darted up to point at him. He suddenly felt a tug near his chest, and his front pocket ripped right off. The Expansion Charm on the pocket broke, and Hedwig burst out of the magical space and into the air. Unable to suddenly catch her balance mid-air, she plummeted towards the floor. Before Harry could do anything other than watch aghast, Fawkes took off from his shoulder, catching the falling Hedwig with his claws and bursting into flames in a single motion, teleporting both the phoenixes out of there.

In the same instant, Dumbledore's hand flitted through a dozen wand movements before he brought his hands out in a wide arc. A humongous spout of fire started gushing from his hands and filled the entire height of the room in front of Harry, forming a huge wall of large abnormal flames that licked up against the sides and roof of the room as they took the shape of fiery beasts, dragons, chimaeras, and phoenixes, hiding Dumbledore behind them.

It was as if time itself froze for a moment, letting Harry realize what was happening.

 _Dumbledore_ was trying to kill him, and he was using _Fiendfyre_ to do it.

Bugger.

Time started again, and the wall of flame started hurtling towards him, the dozens of fiery beasts falling and rising and falling again as the entire mass of undulating raking hot flame and toxic smoke swiftly accelerating on.

Ping!

 **Area Sense: Giant fucking wall of flame that will kill you is 6 meters away!**

Harry could feel the hairs on his arm singe even as the wall of flame was half a dozen meters away, which was indication enough that he wasn't as immune to this cursed fire as he was to normal flames. It also meant that he couldn't control it. There was no water here to use, the floor was marble and uncontrollable, and while he could use Aeromancy to remove most oxygen from the flame, he was pretty sure that _Fiendfyre_ didn't need it to burn.

Ping!

 **Area Sense: Giant fucking wall of flame that will kill you is 4 meters away!**

Harry pushed the questions about _why_ Dumbledore would do this out of his mind for the moment and focused on how to get out of this situation. Gamer's Mind took no time in deducing that to the conclusion that Dumbledore had asked for the Room of Requirements to contain him perfectly, and the thrice-damned piece of shit Room decided to work _perfectly_ this time.

 **Area Sense: Giant fucking wall of flame that will kill you is 3 meters away! Run you twat!**

'Run,' Harry thought as he watched the fiery monsters draw ever closer and closer, claws and horns and tails lashed, and the heat was solid as a wall around them. He could use Unicorn Boost and run…but where? There was no escape from this room. No doors, no windows, no way to get out. He couldn't apparate, and Hedwig had been taken from him.

 **Area Sense: Giant fucking wall of flame that will kill you is 2 meters away! How much more instruction do you need!**

The heat was starting to grow unbearable as the flames were starting to lick at him hungrily and his sweat started to steam on his skin. Harry remembered something from the Room's Observe.

 **Status: The Ley Line is temporarily blocked. (Time remaining on Block Spell: 1 hour)**

The Ley Line was the reason Harry couldn't use ID around the Room in the first place! That was why the ID Create skill showed Error windows around it! If it was blocked, then there was only one thing left to do.

 **Area Sense: Giant fucking wall of flame that will kill you is 1 meter away! What the fuck are you doing! Building up dramatic tension?!**

"ID Create!"

The raging inferno in front of him disappeared, leaving him in an empty version of the room he was standing in. The sheer suddenness of the silence almost brought Harry to his knees.

Why would Dumbledore be trying to kill him? Had he somehow found out about his Gamer powers and was trying to eliminate him before he got too powerful? Did he suspect something about the violent past he had in the early days of gaining his Gamer abilities before he had come to Hogwarts? Had he discovered something about that foreboding vision he had in the Mirror of Erised last Christmas?

Whatever the reason, with the Fiendfyre gone and his sudden rush of adrenaline subsiding, Harry was left with a choice to make.

Option one. He could hightail the fuck out of here, first head to the Flamels for help, and if by some chance even they turned out to be untrustworthy, then just straight up escape the country and live life as a muggle named Jeff using the money he got by fighting zombies until he got strong enough to get back at the old man.

Option two. He could go back into the Room and face Dumbledore.

There were dozens of reasons to choose option one, and only one to choose option 2.

The old fuckwad still had Hedwig.

Gritting his teeth, Harry pulled out his wand from his inventory and stuck it into his pocket, before pulling Gandiva out and notching a Doom arrow that could easily cave in the entire room if Dumbledore tried anything else.

"ID Escape," he muttered, popping out into the real world, ready to blow the place to kingdom come.

The sight in front of him was _not_ what he had expected. The Room had changed, and the change hadn't been reflected in the ID.

Gone was the pure white circular room and the nightmarish inferno of flame, instead replaced by an office room not dissimilar to the Headmaster's office. The floor was covered by a dark red carpet, and the walls were filled with paintings of rivers and waterfalls. On the other side of the room from where he was, lay a claw-footed desk at which sat Dumbledore, a gentle smile on his face. Off to the side were two golden perches, upon which sat Fawkes and Hedwig, looking _oddly_ calm for someone who had just been kidnapped.

"Apologies for that Harry, though I must say, that's quite the handy ability you have there," Dumbledore said genially, smiling at him over his hands steepled on the table.

It took a second of Harry blankly staring at the old man before he realized what had just happened.

"Fuck"

Dumbledore smiled pleasantly, "Language, Harry."

"Shut up," he snapped, making the notched arrow disappear and turning his bow back into a ring on his finger. He turned to Hedwig, "Were you in on this?"

" _I wasn't,_ " she said crossly, flapping her wings agitatedly as she shot Fawkes a dirty glance, " _Fawkes told me after he took me away that the fire was an illusion and that they were trying to get you to reveal your ability._ "

Harry looked back at Dumbledore, quite a bit angry. What had actually tipped him off? Why would he act on it _now_?

"Why?" he asked, fixing a stony glare on the Headmaster.

"Take a seat Harry," Dumbledore's smile was gone as he waved his hand, making a cushioned chair appear across the desk from him, "The matter is complicated, and I assure you that you will find the reason more than sufficient. It is about Miss Turpin."

Lisa's name sobered Harry down a bit. Hesitantly walking up to the table, he pulled the chair back and sat down stiffly.

Dumbledore continued, "Thank you Harry. I was making some Floo calls while you were waiting at the Ministry. To confirm whether or not Wentworth was being honest with you."

"And?" Harry impatiently asked.

"He was. Lucius is doing anything he can. Blackmail. Influence. Threats. Bribery. He is leaving no stone unturned in making sure that Lisa Turpin is buried six feet under, along with any proof of his involvement in the Hogwarts Massacre. Wentworth was right when he said that there is no chance of winning this _legally_."

Harry frowned. There was the same emphasis on the word legally in Dumbledore's voice as it had been in Wright's voice. The kind of emphasis that would spring out like italics amongst plain text if it was written on paper. "What do you mean _legally_?"

The twinkle in Dumbledore's eyes was back again, "I thought it would be obvious. Why else would I pretend to attack you and have you reveal a secret that you have been trying to hide for over a year now but for doing something illegal."

Harry's eyebrows disappeared into his hairline. He knew that he should be asking about what he meant by 'illegal', but another part of the sentence grabbed his attention, "You knew that I had the ability to pop in and out of a parallel dimension _since last year_ and you didn't confront me about it?"

"I _suspected_ that you had some sort of ability that allowed you to be at a place and not so at the same time. I _knew_ after I realized what that ring on your finger was, and asked a centaur elder why you had it in your possession. He refused to tell me more than that it was a gift, but he wasn't unwilling to share your aptitude at Scrying and how he had seen you disappear and reappear at will. It pointed me in the right direction,"

Harry could have slammed his head onto the table right then and there.

His abilities were supposed to be _secret_. Now Dumbledore knew about his wandless magic, his Observe, his highly destructive Bow, and now his ID ability. At this rate, he'd find out all his other secrets, his gamer abilities, _and_ the size of his penis by the end of the year.

Ping!

 **Due to finally learning some humility, take +1 Wis!**

Trying to remain outwardly calm, he waved away the screen and asked, "And you aren't worried about me abusing it?"

Dumbledore chuckled, "Believe it or not Harry. This is not the first I have seen of this kind of ability. I have met the rare few people who have learned to harness this ability and move through dimensions at will. Although you do seem to be a prodigy of sorts at it, I would have put an end to it if it had been needed."

Harry's eyes widened. The sheer implications of this were staggering. He had already noticed this trend that each one of his skills and abilities was based on already existing magic, but the thought that his ID skills were like that…It had never even crossed his mind.

"How did they learn it?" he asked eagerly, his earlier anger at the Headmaster gone.

Dumbledore smiled, "While your curiosity is appropriate, that is a very long conversation best left for another day. I insist we drop it for now."

Harry was disappointed, but Dumbledore was adamant. He finally asked, "You mentioned that you did all this because you needed me to do something…illegal. What is it?"

"I need you to break Miss Turpin out of the Ministry."

There was a single moment of silence, in which Harry incredulously stared at him.

"You need me to do _what_?"

"I need you to use your Invisibility Cloak and your ability to pass between Dimensions to get Miss Turpin out of Ministry custody so that we can prevent her from being taken to Azkaban after she is convicted and getting her mind further damaged by Dementors. Your abilities are suited to this, your age allows you leeway, and no place in the world can hold you if this goes south. You are the perfect candidate for the job," Dumbledore answered, dead serious.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Break Lisa out!**

 **Rewards,**

 **6,000 Exp**

 **Failure,**

 **Lisa's conviction**

 **YES/NO?**

The sense of unease that initially filled Harry soon dissipated after he pondered the thought for a second. There was no way he was going to let Lisa die or get Kissed by a Dementor, and for some reason, Dumbledore was just as determined to not let her come to harm as he was.

He didn't know what that reason was. Maybe it was because she was his student. Maybe it was because she reminded him of that sister the Flamels had mentioned. But what he did know was that if breaking her out of there was needed, then breaking her out was what he was going to do. Pressing Yes and looking into Dumbledore's eyes, Harry said the only thing that was to be said.

"I'll do it."

* * *

Half an hour later, Harry and Hedwig flamed back into the toilet stall they were previously in, now with a clear plan in their minds.

"ID Create," Harry muttered as soon as Hedwig was back in his newly repaired and re-enchanted pocket.

He'd have to make sure that she wasn't seen or used her abilities in front of anyone. There were only two people in the Wizarding Britain who were publicly known to have a phoenix, and both of them would be in great trouble if Lisa disappeared with someone in a burst of flame.

The sun outside the enchanted fake window turned red, and Harry stepped out of the stall before opening up his inventory and pulling out the Wolf jacket. Closing the inventory, he put it on and flipped the hood up. Even if the Invisibility Cloak failed him somehow, he needed to be positive that this wasn't connected in any way to Harry Potter, and the Wolf jacket's illusionary visual and voice disguises were good for that.

"Get ready Hedwig," Harry said, "We're going to be going through the Auror Headquarters and this is going to be a bumpy ride."

" _Let's go save her_ ," came the determined reply.

Activating Unicorn Boost, Harry ran out of the bathroom and boosted down the corridor containing the Wizengamot offices, reaching the end where a set of large heavy oak doors were located. Pushing them open, Harry stepped in and emerged in a large cluttered open area divided into cubicles. What was no doubt a busy and buzzing area in the real world felt almost hauntingly empty in the ID.

A lopsided sign on the nearest cubicle read: _Auror Headquarters_.

Harry darted through the Auror Headquarters, flitting through the narrow winding spaces between cubicles as he made his way to the opposite side where the door leading down to the Ministry Lockups were located.

The stature of the small black door belied its importance. Harry opened it and stepped into the tiny room it led to.

The room was just a plain box. No doors other than the one Harry stepped in through. No windows. No openings. Just a plain unfurnished room. To the outsider, this would have been confusing. How was this room supposed to lead to a lockup that was said to be able to hold a hundred prisoners at once?

But Harry knew what was needed to be done. Stepping over to the corner, he pulled out his Invisibility Cloak and pulled it tight around him, ready to wait.

"ID Escape," he muttered, letting the buzz of the Auror Headquarters just across the door wash over him as he let his mind wander back to his conversation with Dumbledore.

" _The Ministry Lockups are quite fickle. Much like the Hogwarts stairs, their pathways, tunnels, and stairways are ever changing, never leading to the place you might think. From your descriptions, it appears that your Dimensions do not reflect magical changes to the real world that happen after you have entered it. That means that if you go into your Dimension somewhere in the maze, you might end up inside a wall when you come out. So what you will have to do is follow someone who is experienced in the tunnels to Miss Turpin's cell, grab her, and have Miss Hedwig get you out of there."_

" _And how am I supposed to know if someone is actually going to her cell and not somewhere else?"_

" _You wait. Once the Wizengamot is assembled and the vote is cast, the Judge will ask for the accused to be brought to the Courtroom to announce the result to them. Two guards, both bearing the Wizengamot's insignia will be sent to bring her. Follow them."_

Harry looked at his watch.

 _12:05_

It was almost time.

Sure enough, mere seconds later, the door opened with a creak and two hooded black robed guards stepped in, the wand and scales insignia embroidered in gold on their right breasts.

Harry braced himself, pushing up as far as he could against the wall to make sure he remained undetected. He needed to mark these two as closely as possible. He pulled up his Sneaking skill.

 **Sneaking, Lv-67(21%)**

 **Allows you to sneak up on someone.**

 **96% chance of not getting caught.**

 **96% chance of critical strike.**

This was good. The Invisibility Cloak's 50 level boost to Sneaking was in full effect. He'd need it. With no second thought, Harry waved the window away and dropped into Sneak mode.

The guards stepped towards the center of the room and tapped their foot six times in succession. Suddenly the floor cracked in a large uniform circle around the guards, and the circular section containing them started to sink down. Quickly, Harry pulled out his wand and snapped _Silencios_ at his shoes before jogging up and into the circle that started heading downwards, keeping himself near the edge.

And down they went into the large shaft underneath.

"Hey, Stewie. It's your first time in here isn't it?" the first guard asked.

"It is Benji," the other guard excitedly replied, "I can't believe I'm going down there! Hell, I can't believe they let us be the guards for an actual _Wizengamot_ trial!"

"Well, we did help catch those thieves outside Diagon. Maybe the Director thought we deserved a break," the guard called Benji replied, fiddling with his hood, "Whatever the case, I'm not complaining. Going through the maze to the lockups is always fun."

"Is it true that it's designed after the Labyrinth?" Stewie asked. Harry kept an ear open. Any information was good for someone in his situation, and this Benji guy seemed quite free with it in front of what appeared to be someone new to this thing.

"You bet it is," Benji replied, the grin hidden by his hood obvious in his voice.

With a grumble and trundle and thump, the circular section of the floor they were standing on ground to a stop. With the torchlight from the tiny room above them now reduced to a mere speck, barely anything was visible other than the shadowy forms of the two guards.

'Mage Sight activate' Harry thought, and the world around him flared to life. Benji and Stewie glowed a vibrant orange and yellow, and the walls of the shaft around them glowed a soft gentle blue everywhere but in one position, where a rectangle the size of a large door glowed a harsh orange. Keeping Mage Sight on, Harry slinked alongside the wall closer to the spot, making sure that if the Guards decided to suddenly enter, he'd be able to easily follow them.

Benji and Stewie made their way over to the same section of the wall that Harry had detected something off with and then placed both their hands on it at the same time.

A minute passed. Nothing happened.

"Am I doing it right Benji?" Stewie asked, his uncertainty obvious in his voice. Harry keenly listened for the reply.

"Don't you worry mate," was the reply, "Just let the door work its magic for a bit. There are a lot of spells on it to make sure no one gets in or out without permission."

Another half a minute passed before Benji took his hand off and Stewie followed suit. Suddenly without any warning, the stone wall section melted away into the floor, revealing a wooden door just enough to fit one man in. The Guards opened the door and entered one after another, Stewie following Benji, and Harry surreptitiously following them in.

"Make sure to keep focused okay?" Benji said as they headed straight down the corridor with the stone walls, "The maze messes with gravity, so we'll be walking walls and roofs and you'll see some weird stuff."

"Gravity?" Stewie disbelievingly muttered, turning around and staring right through Harry as the door behind them slid shut.

"They use a bunch of that Limbo mist to make the maze even more befuddling than it already is. It'll be confusing as we head on, so stay focused and follow me."

Stewie obeyed, and Harry followed them both, using every skill he had in his arsenal to make sure he wasn't detected. Silencios, using Aeromancy to make sure that his movements didn't disturb the air and tip anyone off, the Invisibility Cloak, Stealth skill. He was practically non-existent, and unless one of the Guards actually tackled right into him, there was no chance of him getting caught.

The maze walls, roof, and floors looked to be made of brownstone, with nothing but the occasional torch to light the passage.

The tunnel they were in bent right, and then left, and then a complete U before it forked into two at an interjection. The left tunnel was similar to the one they had been following thus far, and the right one showed a noticeable change in that it was completely made of black marble. Benji stopped, looked at both sides and closed his eyes.

"This way," he said, opening his eyes a moment later and pointing to the right.

"How do you know?" Stewie curiously asked as they headed into the tunnel

"Practice," Benji replied, "Now focus! We have one of those gravity messing parts coming up ahead, and you don't want to be thrown off while you're in its effect."

Realizing something, Harry quickly pulled out his wand and cast sticking charms, sticking his cloak onto his shoes. If the parts that messed with gravity _did_ actually mess with gravity, then he didn't want his Cloak to fall right off of him and expose him in the process. Making sure that the charm stuck, Harry hurried along to catch up with the Guards, who had briskly walked on.

Left they went . . . then right . . . and right again. The material of the walls around him changed from marble to coarse granite, and then brick. A quick look behind him showed that the path they had come from wasn't there anymore, instead having been replaced with an endlessly long corridor. The maze was replacing their paths as soon as they passed, and it was unnerving how swiftly it was doing it.

Ahead, a veil of golden mist that hung ominously at the end of the corridor, obscuring the path further ahead of them.

Benji walked ahead unflinchingly as they approached it, not saying a word as he stepped right through. Stewie followed, and Harry, taking a deep breath, readied himself and stepped into the mist.

The world turned upside down.

Harry was hanging from the ground with his hair on end, with Stewie and Benji standing a mere two steps ahead, too close for comfort. Benji's mouth was moving, but the blood rushing to Harry's head was blurring his vision and leaving him with a terrible ringing noise in his head. Forcing Gamer's Mind to use whatever portion of his brain that wasn't being waterboarded by his own blood to focus on Benji's voice, Harry listened.

"…Get used to the feeling Stewie. We have a couple more minutes left to go," Benji's voice said.

"This…this is just weird," Stewie sounded quite woozy, "You sure that I won't fall if I step ahead?"

"Positive. Now come on. It only gets more disconcerting from here."

" _Bugger_ ," Stewie tiredly muttered, and Harry had to agree with the sentiment as his eyes refocused and he saw what the path ahead of them looked like.

The corridor ahead of them wasn't a corridor at all. Instead, it was a perfectly smooth tunnel that looked like the inside of a huge cylindrical pipe. The upside down path they were standing on continued on for a couple of more meters, and then started spiraling around the tunnel like the red stripe on a Christmas candy cane.

Harry's gut sank.

The Guards started heading on, and making his brain get over the thought that taking a step would send him plummeting down to his death, Harry followed, mechanically forcing himself to take step after step. It took few moments before he could move as fast as Benji was, but thankfully, Stewie was just as inexperienced in the maze, which slowed Benji down to the point that Harry could keep up with him and deal with his vertigo at the same time.

And off they went, winding around the tunnel as they walked through the tunnel that went on to slope almost impossibly downward until they were practically walking in a spiral helix around the walls of a tunnel that dropped straight downwards.

Which was probably _upwards_ since the gravity was messed up.

Or maybe it wasn't.

Or maybe it was.

With a start, Harry realized that he had no sense of direction anymore.

It was all very confusing, and he was starting to get a very clear idea of why Dumbledore didn't want him to use ID abilities in here. In an ever-changing place where there was no up and down, flitting in and out of dimensions that might not reflect the changes that were happening in the real world was…a bad idea.

"This is incredible," Stewie muttered, breaking the silence, "I wonder why they stopped using this and started using Azkaban."

It was quite a good question. A place that could keep out someone with as versatile abilities as Harry had seemed like a naturally good choice for a prison. Quite curious himself, Harry listened for the reply.

"Obvious isn't it?" Benji said, pulling on his hood to make sure it was still sitting right on his head, "The Dementors. They're the ultimate guards. Strong, fast, dangerous. They're pretty much the only thing Azkaban needs to keep people in. No need for fancy magic. No need to have any people there. No chance of prisoners learning the trick to navigating the maze. No risk of escapes. It's the perfect prison."

"Until Sirius Black," Stewie gravely said.

"Until Sirius Black," Benji agreed, and the conversation ceased, leaving Harry with an odd feeling in his stomach. Sirius Black. Someone who was responsible of his parent's death. Someone who he should decisively be furious towards. And he was. He was angry, but that anger was tainted with the uneasiness he had been feeling ever since he had discovered the lack of a trial statement in his file. It was nowhere near enough for him to believe that he was innocent, but the fact that his was the only file out of the dozens he had looked through that lacked _any_ mention of a trial was…unsettling.

The tunnel slowly leveled out into a horizontal cylinder once more, revealing a wall of the same golden mist from earlier at the end of it. With one last twist around it, their path leveled out on the roof, leaving them standing upside down in front of the veil of mist.

Benji and Stewie stepped through, and giving them a second to make sure he didn't smack right into them, Harry followed.

Immediately, the world righted itself.

Ping!

 **Due to navigating an area with weird gravity with relatively good balance, take +2 Dex!**

Ping!

 **Due to managing to not pass out or die in strange gravitational fields, take +3 Vit!**

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up due to successful use!**

 **Sneaking, Lv-18(1%)**

 **Allows you to sneak up on someone.**

 **71% chance of not getting caught.**

 **71% chance of critical strike.**

Harry's knees almost buckled, and his vision blurred again before clearing instantly. He looked around. They were in a long stonewalled corridor with solid iron doors on either side. At the end of the corridor stood a plain wooden desk, at which sat a plump man with a thick mustache who was thumbing through a ledger. Presumably, the person who permanently guarded and kept a record of the prisoners held here, the man hadn't noticed the newcomers into the corridor yet.

He had made it, Harry realized with relief. This was the Ministry Lockup!

"Well. This is it Stewie. We made it through your first time in the Maze," Benji said, patting his friend's back who had fallen forward on his knees onto the ground.

While the confirmation was appreciated, there was no time to rejoice. Harry looked at his watch.

 _12:22_

He had been in the maze for over fifteen minutes now. He needed to be quick with getting Lisa out of this place. Harry raised his fists, ready to slam his knuckles into the two Guards' heads and knock them unconscious, but something made him hesitate.

There was something else he could do to throw DMLE off his track even more.

He had been seen by Aurors wearing his Wolf jacket disguise more than once. Auror Tonks and that partner of hers had both seen him. If he made it look like this _'man in the hood'_ had broken Lisa out of prison, it would toss the authorities off his scent really easily. It could be the cover that he and Dumbledore needed to make sure that they weren't suspected.

Mind made, Harry dissolved the sticking charms on his Cloak and took it off, dropping it back into his Inventory.

The firelight caught his form, casting his shadow across the two Guards, making Benji look around. He gasped, which Harry took as confirmation that he had seen him. Both his fists darted out, slamming both the Guards hard on the head, knocking them out cold. The man at the end of the corridor looked up at the noise of them hitting the ground, but Harry was too fast. He quickly activated Unicorn Boost and darted across the corridor in a flash, knocking out the man before he could even pull his wand out.

Quickly rifling through the ledger, Harry found the cell with Lisa in it. Grabbing the keys from the drawer, Harry headed over to Cell #4 and opened it.

The cell was small, with a small rickety bed to one side where Lisa lay asleep, a desk-chair set to the other side, and a sink and a toilet attached to the wall. Harry glanced at her status.

 **Lisa Turpin (Status: Unconscious)**

 **Lv-7**

She was unconscious. That was good. Harry looked at his watch again.

 _12:24_

It was time.

Peeking out into the corridor to make sure that no one was watching, Harry opened his jacket and pulled open his pocket. With a flap of her wings, Hedwig burst out of the magical space and onto Harry's shoulder.

"To the Room of Requirement. Get us out of here girl," Harry said, picking up Lisa with some effort and stepping away from the bed.

" _On it._ "

All the world around him turned to fire for a second, and he reappeared outside the Room of Requirement on the 7th floor of Hogwarts.

The tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy looked away from the trolls he was teaching ballet to and watched curiously as Harry walked back and forth three times, wishing for a safe spot that only Dumbledore and he could access. At the end of the third pace, a hole appeared in the wall, which slowly expanded into a door. Harry opened it awkwardly with his foot and stepped in, letting Hedwig fly in before closing it.

The room was perfect, with a fire burning warm in the fireplace and a bed for Lisa to lie on.

Placing Lisa on the bed, Harry turned to look at the Room.

" _Once you have placed Miss Turpin here, ask the Room for my message._ " That was what the Professor had said.

"I _require_ Professor Dumbledore's message," he said out loud.

A small three-legged, claw-footed stool flowed into existence in front of him, and a small piece of paper appeared with a vaguely familiar silver trinket placed on top of it.

 _Meet at the Ministry. Half a turn should do it._

A wide grin spread across his face.

Dumbledore had left his Time Turner with the room to give to him! With the blame falling on the 'man in the hood' combined with this Time-Turner, they would be practically untouchable now.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Break Lisa out!**

 **Rewards,**

 **6,000 Exp**

Harry picked up the Time Turner, stepped out of the Room, placed the chain around his neck and gave it half a turn.

The world around him dissolved in a blur.

* * *

Having gone back half an hour to 11:55, Harry got Hedwig to flame him over to the Ministry immediately, where he had returned the Time-Turner to Dumbledore.

The Trial had gone just as they had expected. The Vote was decisively against Lisa with the Traditionalists and most of the Neutrals under Malfoy's control. The guards were sent, but they didn't return. The Wizengamot was left waiting, first impatient, then uneasy, and then finally worried enough to send Aurors.

The clock had struck 12:30 by then, and Harry knew that he had pulled it off.

The entire Wizengamot had been held for the next half hour, along with Nicholas, Harry, and Margaret who were sitting in the visitor's gallery. Dumbledore had been called aside by two hooded people, presumably Unspeakables, who ran their wands over him. Whatever their spells told them must have been enough, because they were all soon free to go.

By 1:00 PM, Harry, Dumbledore, and Nicholas were riding up the elevator to the Flamel Apartment.

"Let me get this straight," Nicholas said, "You, Harry, can jump between dimensions in addition to Scrying and using Wandless magic. And you, Albus, decided that you would trick him into revealing his abilities and then use him to illegally break out Lisa Turpin."

"Yes…" Harry replied, bracing himself. Telling the Flamels was something that he wanted to do, but he hadn't deluded himself into thinking that it would be easy.

And it wasn't. Nicholas looked _pissed_.

Thankfully, he seemed pissed at the older one of his apprentices.

"Albus _Dumbledore_! What the _heck_ were you thinking?! Doing all this without telling us! You've been growing way too out of hand!"

"I assure you, Nicholas, that Harry was quite capable of-"

"Capable my ass! When Perenelle hears about it, I swear she will pull out that cane of hers and I won't be the one stopping her."

Seeing Dumbledore flinch at Nicholas's chastising was oddly satisfying for Harry. Not unsurprising, considering the stunt the old Headmaster had pulled today to get him to reveal his powers. Leaning against the wall, Harry tuned out Nicholas's scolding and Dumbledore's placating in favor of his own thoughts. Today had worked out pretty well. Even if Malfoy wasn't an asset anymore, he had found an ally in Wright, as well as managed to save Lisa. A few of his secrets getting out was a problem, but it wasn't something he couldn't handle.

Despite the tragedies of the year, he still had most of his friends. He had his family. He had Hedwig. As much as Voldemort had crumbled the world around him, he could rebuild it. He _would_ rebuild it.

And he would find a way to take down Voldemort forever.

Ding!

The elevator opened to a sight that at first baffled, and then shocked Harry to a standstill. Mr. Fortescue's apartment door was open; which was an anomaly in itself since Mr. Fortescue was supposed to be in Diagon right now; and in the middle of the corridor sat a large black dog. And above that dog hovered its name.

 **Sirius Black**

 **Lv-37**

Almost subconsciously, Harry cast an Observe.

 **Sirius Black**

 **Lv-37**

 **HP-15200/15200**

 **MP-8100/8100**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-18**

 **Vit-31**

 **Dex-29**

 **Int-32**

 **Wis-20**

 **Luc-11**

 **Sirius Black, also known as Padfoot or Sir Knucklehead Fudducker McSpazzatron in his Animagus form is a wrongfully incarcerated prisoner of Azkaban. He disagrees with blood purity and fought against Lord Voldemort. When his friend Pettigrew betrayed the Potters, Sirius sought to exact revenge, but Pettigrew was able to frame Sirius and escape before he could do it. After 11 years in prison, he managed to escape unassisted.**

 **He is Harry's godfather and he loves him dearly to the point that he broke out of Azkaban in an effort to make sure he was safe. Right now he is feeling an intense itch that he really wants to scratch.**

Sirius Black was innocent, and Pettigrew was alive. That was more than enough for Harry. Almost instantly pulling out his wand, Harry pointed it at the black dog who was obliviously scratching away at his ear.

" _STUPEFY!_ "

Before the dog could even turn around to look at the source of the noise, the solid burst of red light smacked it right on its head, knocking it out and straight into the ground.

Harry slowly turned to look at a befuddled-looking Dumbledore and an even more befuddled looking Nicholas. His own words sounded weird to his ears.

"You're going to think I'm crazy, but Sir KnuckleheadFudducker McSpazzatron is actually Sirius Black, and he is innocent."

* * *

Floating the dog into the apartment and explaining _everything_ to Perenelle took a good long while. Explaining his knowledge of Black's innocence away as his Scrying abilities took some effort, as well as quietly sitting through the fifteen-minute long admonishment about keeping more secrets than it was good for him.

The fifteen minutes after _that_ were easier though. Watching Dumbledore get reamed by someone he was clearly intimidated by was rather funny.

An hour and one Homorphous charm later, they were left with one scruffy dangerous criminal unconscious on their couch, one not-so-dangerous criminal unconscious in a secret room at Hogwarts, and nary an idea of what to do next.

"He is drained and malnourished to the core, and it will be a while before he will use magic as normal. His magic is dangerously cramped up from disuse, and the constant presence of Dementors around him probably made it worse. This is not the kind of healing I can provide," Pernelle muttered, her eyes glowing as she waved her wand in a slow circle of Black's unconscious body.

Harry used Heal on him, wanting to see what was wrong.

Ping!

 **You are attempting to heal somebody with several ailments! Please choose one to heal:**

 **Malnutrition**

 **Magical Trauma**

Harry selected the Magical Trauma, wondering if it was the same as Lisa.

 **WARNING: Patient has been long subjected to repeated relivings of his worst memories via Dementor exposure, leaving the patient drained. This weakness causes a tendency in the user to avoid using Magic for everyday things, making their core cramp up. Any heal would only be temporary unless he learns to use magic freely again. Physiotherapy recommended.**

 **Proceed for 6 month heal?**

 **YES/NO**

Harry pressed Yes. It was similar to what Lisa had in some ways, but it was different too. Less…severe.

"I will see if there are any ways I could overtly search for Peter," Dumbledore said, stroking his beard, "but for now, Sirius's escape might have been a good thing. With all Auror resources devoted to searching for him, Miss Turpin will be safer than ever. Sending them both into hiding would be the best move for now."

"Can we wake him up at least?" Harry quietly asked from his seat, "He escaped from literal hell to make sure that I was okay. He deserves to know that I'm fine."

Perenelle shared a meaningful glance with Nicholas, who nodded. Harry turned to Hedwig, who was resting on his armrest, "Can you help him?"

" _I will,_ " echoed the reply in his mind, and Hedwig lifted off and flew over to the armrest of the sofa that Black lay on. She opened her beak, and a soothing song started floating through the room. Fawkes joined in from his spot on the table near Dumbledore, and the room was filled with a melodious medley.

A soft smile spread across Black's unconscious face. " _Enervate_ ," Perenelle cast, and moments later, his eyes fluttered open.

The first thing Sirius Black saw when he woke up was a pure white phoenix staring curiously down at his face.

The first thing Sirius Black did when he woke up was scream like a little bitch.

"AAAARRRRGGGH!"

Hedwig decided that she didn't like screaming, and took off, gliding her way over to the table where Fawkes was perched. Sirius's eyes followed her, before they slid onto Dumbledore, who was sitting on the chair beside. The shock of seeing Dumbledore easily overcame the shock of suddenly coming face to face with an albino super-turkey, and his eyes widened.

"Professor…" he muttered, his voice half hopeful, half fearful.

Dumbledore had a heartbreakingly sad smile on his face, "I know…and I'm sorry my boy. So very sorry…You switched, didn't you? With Peter? Without telling me."

An agonizing expression filled Black's face, "We did. We didn't…know if we could trust you. Such fools we were…"

"All these years…How did you even survive?" Dumbledore asked, keeping Black's focus on him.

"I don't know how I did it," Black said slowly. "I think the only reason I never lost my mind is that I knew I was innocent. The thought…it kept me sane…let me keep my magic. But I was barely getting by" He swallowed, "But when I saw Harry in that newspaper a guard threw at me…saw him in danger…it lit a fire in me…one the Dementors couldn't touch. So I slipped through the bars…I swam and swam…"

His eyes slid over to where Harry was sitting, and contrary to the powerful reaction that he'd expected, the only thing Black did was smile softly.

"I remember thinking about ice cream for the first time in a decade…and the time I snuck you to Diagon to get you your first one…the thought made me happy…smile…and when I was almost unconscious and drowning, my magic apparated me there," Black kept looking at Harry, and the smile never left his face, "You have your mother's eyes…anyone tell you that?

Harry's throat had choked up, so he just returned a small smile and nodded.

"Good…" Black said, closing his eyes as he leaned back into the sofa, "This is a good dream…I'll wake up soon in Fortescue's house, and I'll…try to make this a reality…minus the strange turkey."

Hedwig, who Harry promptly decided had no respect for poignant and deeply personal moments, decided to take offense to that. Flapping over to perch on the backrest of the sofa, she slammed her beak right into Sirius's head.

"OW!" Sirius jumped, his eyes flying open as his hands darted up to rub his head.

" _This is real you jackass mutt!_ " Hedwig's voice echoed loud and angry in all their heads.

"She is right my boy," Dumbledore said, smiling amusedly at the grown man and Phoenix having a full blown stare down, "And we have a lot to tell you."

It took another fifteen minutes for them to fill Sirius in on what was going on. Harry decided to go with his gut feeling and tell Sirius about the powers that Dumbledore and the Flamels already knew about, as well as his role in getting Lisa out of the Ministry Lockups. It seemed to be Give-Secrets-Out Day today, so he might as well give to those who deserved them.

"Travelling in between Dimensions…" Sirius muttered incredulously, "That is…"

"I know," Harry said only half-sheepishly, "It's all a bit strange. I realize I'm probably not what you expected, but I am what I am."

Sirius shook his head calmly. He looked much more stable than Harry had expected him to be. Mr. Fortescue's care must have really helped somehow, "What I expected you to be was injured, half dead and traumatized after what I read in that article. Instead, you are happy…you've found good people…what you are is my Godson, and you're perfect as you are."

Harry nodded with a smile, turning to pay attention to what Nicholas and Dumbledore were talking about.

"Perhaps your friend in Nepal can help us by providing Sirius and Miss Turpin asylum if you write to her?" Professor Dumbledore suggested.

"Yao?" Nicholas said, his voice suddenly defensive, "You cannot be serious Albus!"

"He is not wrong," Perenelle interrupted, stroking her chin, "She can help them heal. Help _her_ heal."

Nicholas shook his head, "She can, but her magic isn't like our Perenelle. Her power comes from a different place."

Dumbledore frowned, "Nepal is outside of Britain's, and even ICW's influence. Both Miss Turpin and Sirius will be safe there, as well as remain accessible to us. Besides, they need to heal, Miss Turpin more so than anyone. You know her magic is suffering and Yao is one of the only ones on the planet who can help."

Perenelle rested a hand on Nicholas's shoulder, "Put aside your ego for a moment Nicholas. Think about them."

The silence hung for a while, and neither Harry nor Sirius dared interrupt. Finally, Nicholas heaved a heavy sigh and agreed, "Fine. But Albus will be dealing with the girl's mother. I will not have her be left hanging after her daughter has been taken."

"I will handle it."

Dumbledore and Nicholas left for upstairs soon after, presumably to draft that letter to the friend of theirs, while Perenelle left for the Potions lab, insisting on brewing up a few more potions for Sirius's physical health as well as some for Lisa before he left with Dumbledore.

And Sirius and Harry found themselves talking about his school days, Harry keen to hear more stories, and Sirius just as eager and desperate to remember them again.

"Messing up Slytherins' potions was a classic one we used to pull. It got so bad that Professor Slughorn refused to let us take our own potion ingredients into the lab anymore."

"And did he give you detentions?" Harry asked

"Detentions?" Sirius exclaimed, "We'd be amateurs if we let him do that. There is something that every great mischief maker needs to have. Do you know what that is?"

"Great imagination?"

"Oh no. That's secondary. _The_ first thing is a sad backstory."

"A…sad backstory?" Harry hesitantly asked, wondering if he was hearing this right.

"That's right," Sirius nodded, "It's something a great purveyor of mischief has to feed as many people as they can. A decently told backstory inspires sympathy and affection. Sometimes even pity. All of which are essential to make sure that people are more likely to feel bad and not turn you in."

Harry raised an eyebrow, "That's actually pretty astute."

"It is. Mine used to be how my parents and family never understood me. Now, when I'm free, I'll be using the wrongfully convicted card as much as I can. Pulling pranks. Meeting girls. Making people give me free stuff. I'll be on top of the world. That story is _impossible_ to top!"

It had been a very strange, and in many ways very exhausting day. But the wide grin on Sirius's face as he spoke of freedom was impossible to stay grim around.

Almost as if on its own, a smile stretched across Harry's face.

It was a strange day, but it was a good day.

* * *

 **In case you haven't figured it out yet, I like making references. Dumbledore mentioning meeting people who can shift between dimensions. A woman from Nepal who practices a 'different' form of magic. Got any guesses about what that's a reference to?**

 ** _P.S. Don't worry. I've said it before and I'll say it again. This isn't a crossover. I just love making cool references and connections. :-)_**


	39. Epilogue-II:Veritas Nunquam Perit

Epilogue:

 _If Novikov's Self Consistency Principle turns out to be correct, then what will this imply about the philosophical notion of **free will** for humans and other intelligent beings?_

 _It certainly will imply that intelligent beings cannot change the past. Such change is incompatible with the principle of self-consistency. Consequently, anyone that uses Time Travel and tries to change the past would be prevented by Universe itself from making the change; i.e. the "free will" of the being would be limited._

 _And although this might not be obvious to non-Time-Travelling individuals, this constraint has a more global character. Joffington Douglas of the Department of Mysteries theorizes that if the Universe is always consistent with itself, then it might not be incorrect to say that it is following a 'set course' of sorts._

 _The implications of that, are immense._

Harry closed the book and leaned back into the cushioned armchair he was sitting on in the Flamel library. A lot of the theory about Time Travel he had been reading in this book made _minimal_ sense to him, and whatever little that did had too many disturbing implications.

Closing his eyes, he let his mind drift back to the conversation he had with Dumbledore on the Halloween night, the night he had learned that Time Travel was possible.

" _Novikov's Principle says that if an event exists that would give rise to a paradox or 'change' the past, then the probability of that event is zero. It is impossible to create time paradoxes. Time turners are built to exploit that…self-consistency of the universe, so as to speak."_

 _"But what if I don't want to obey the Principle? What if I go back in time and kill myself?"_

 _"It won't matter if you want to Harry. The universe will take the path of least resistance, and cut you off from existence. The moment you will turn the hourglass of the time turner with the clear and rigid intention to kill yourself, it would be as if you never existed. You would be…unborn."_

The library door opened with a creak, snapping Harry out of his thoughts. Opening his eyes, he looked up to see who it was.

"Harry?" Perenelle called as she stepped in, looking curiously at him, "It's almost noon, and you've been in here since the morning. You didn't even come down for breakfast. Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," Harry assured her as she walked over to him and picked up one of the books he had been reading from the small table beside his chair, "Just a bit stuck on this book."

" _Diagramma Chronos_. The Diagram of Time," Perenelle muttered, reading the title of the book he had just been reading as she sat down on his chair's armrest, "I didn't know you were interested in Time magic. This is a bit beyond your curriculum isn't it?"

A mocking half-smile spread across Harry's face, "I don't have a curriculum remember. No more Hogwarts this year. Besides, when have I ever stuck to the curriculum."

"Certainly not when you blackmailed Nicholas into teaching you alchemy," was the flat reply.

Harry stilled.

"…you know about that?"

"What? That you threatened to turn over Nicholas's magazine collection to me if he didn't agree to teach you alchemy?" Perenelle said, idly turning over a page of the book she was looking at.

"Yes…" Harry said tentatively.

"Of course I did. You two boys aren't _nearly_ as stealthy as you think you are."

"So why did you put a stop to it?" Harry asked.

"Because Nicholas has wanted to teach someone ever since Albus left his tutelage," Perenelle said, turning to look at him with a smile, "He wanted to teach you, but he is a bit too proud at times for his own good. If you strong-arming him into it was what he needed to get over his ego, then who am I to interfere."

Harry stared at her for a second, before smiling back, "Thanks."

"You're welcome," she said, before curiously asking, "Where _did_ you hide his magazines? I've been hearing him searching everywhere around the house the last few months."

"You know something funny I learned this summer?" Harry replied with a smile, "Nicholas rarely changes his underpants. He likes to spell them clean."

A look of understanding passed over Perenelle's face before she started chuckling in earnest. "You cheeky little runt. You hid it at the bottom of his underwear drawer didn't you?"

"Yep," Harry replied with a wide grin.

The Flamels' clothing drawers had been warded against summoning and other spells like that, and Harry had thrown in a couple other spells he had learned in the library as well. He could, of course, have kept them in his inventory but where would the fun have been in that.

Half the fun in this was going to be seeing Nicholas's face when he would find out where the magazines had been hidden all along.

Besides, Harry had kept a couple of magazines in his Inventory.

Just as a backup.

It took a while for Perenelle to stop chuckling and start looking at the book again. Once she did, she turned to him and asked, "Which part were you stuck on?"

Harry leaned over and turned the book over to the right page, "That one. You know how Dumbledore was using the time turner to help save the students' lives right? Well when he told me about it, he mentioned the Principle on that page. Novikov's Self Consistency Principle."

"The language on here seems fairly straightforward. What were you stuck on?"

"It's just," Harry said hesitantly, "If this means what I think this means…"

"You reached the same conclusion as I did when I first read this book didn't you," Perenelle asked as she looked at him with concern in her eyes.

Harry didn't know what conclusion she had reached, but he had a strong feeling that it wasn't far off from his own. The book and Dumbledore both spoke of a single timeline, and how the _Universe was always consistent with itself_.

It wasn't exactly hard to see what it all implied.

"Novikov's Self Consistency Principle does more than validate the existence of Time Travel doesn't it?" he said, a soft tremble in his voice showing as he verbalized his worry, "It…it validates the existence of _Fate_."

He only got a grave nod as a reply.

"Bu-but it can't be true, can it? What does this mean for our free will? Do our choices even matter if everything that happens is actually meant to happen? Are there actual beings out there that are writing out our future, _unborning_ anyone who tries to break the plan? Does this validate the existence of a _God_?" Harry's voice only got more and more panicked as the questions started piling up in his head.

"You're getting carried away Harry," Perenelle said as she gently rubbed his back, "Calm down. This is not a proven Truth. It's just a theory. And as little as we know about Time Magic, there is a good chance that it is not even correct."

"It's widely accepted though, isn't it?" Harry asked worriedly, "Dumbledore believes it."

"Albus can be wrong Harry," Perenelle sternly scolded, "He has been many times. Do not fall into the mistake of believing him to be infallible. You of all people should know better."

"But still," Harry muttered, feeling a bit chastised, " _Fate…_ "

Perenelle sighed, before looking at him straight in the eyes.

"The reason Novikov's Principle is widely accepted is that it explains the properties of Time Travel _as we know it_. It is just a conjecture. Time magic is one of the least understood types of magic out there, and when we discover more about it, we will discard this Principle and move on to a new one," she said surely, "Magic, much like science, is ever evolving. Sometimes even more so. _Nothing_ _is_ _fixed_. You have to remember that if you are going to delve into it."

Harry stared at the book in her hands for a second before nodding, "I should probably focus more on the life around me than half-formed theories about obscure magic shouldn't I?"

Ping!

 **For knowing when to stop focusing on disturbing theories that may or may not be correct, you have gained +1 Wis.**

Ping!

 **For debating about complex magic and theories with someone way above your knowledge level, take +1 Int.**

"That's the spirit," Perenelle said, patting his back as she got off the armrest of his chair. "Now get up. You need to have lunch before you and Nicholas head over to the Ministry to give your statement."

Harry pushed himself onto his feet with a grumble, "Why didn't they take statements while they were holding us in the Courtroom for half a bloody hour yesterday?"

"You can ask them when you get there. Now put those books back and come downstairs soon," Perenelle replied as she walked out of the room, leaving Harry with a pile of books to replace into the shelves.

* * *

It turned out that the 'Statement' was a fairly routine process that every person present in the Courtroom that day had to come to.

As soon as Harry and Nicholas; secretly accompanied by Hedwig inside Harry's pocket; had arrived at the 2nd Floor where they were told to go to, they had been quickly and efficiently ushered by two Aurors into a massive waiting room lined with rows upon rows of benches, upon which sat dozens of Wizengamot members, impatiently grumbling their complaints to each other.

The waiting room had only one other door, which was presumably the Interrogation room. A constant stream of people entered and left the room, which probably meant the Aurors were just as eager to get this entire thing over with as the people they were interrogating.

Harry and Nicholas were pointed to sit down on a bench for two and were told to wait for their turn. Occasional mutters and curious looks towards him and his guardian from passing Wizengamot members aside, the entire thing was rather boring.

Twenty full minutes and over fifty rounds of rock-paper-scissors with Nicholas later, Harry's turn came.

The interrogation went pretty smoothly, probably because the spindly looking middle-aged man who was the Interrogator seemed to be glancing at Harry's scar and stuttering over his words a bit too much to actually ask Harry any actually relevant or pressing questions. The entire thing was rather easy and was over in only ten minutes, and soon Harry was out of there.

And then came Nicholas's turn.

As the older man disappeared behind the door of the Interrogation room for what was no doubt going to be a long while, Harry prepared himself for a boring quarter hour of waiting with the only respite being the quiet conversations he could have with Hedwig in his mind.

What he wasn't prepared for was someone clad in dark robes to slide into Nicholas's seat beside him.

"Excuse me. This seat is tak-" he started to say before he saw who it actually was and ground to a halt.

Lucius Malfoy stared back at him with a pleasant smile.

"You don't mind if I sit here for a minute do you Mr. Potter?" he asked politely.

"I don't," Harry said, keeping his voice flat.

Whatever Malfoy was up to, he couldn't do much in a room as crowded as this. The only things that made sense were either threats or attempts at blackmailing, either of which Harry knew he wouldn't take kindly to. Making sure that Gamer's Mind was at the force and ready to get to work at a moment's notice, Harry prepared himself for what was definitely going to be a tense conversation.

"You were quite a naughty boy this last year weren't you Mr. Potter?" Lucius said, the sharp edge in his voice plenty obvious to Harry, "Breaking into the manor, forcing my house-elf to betray me, assaulting me, Obliviating me . . . I could land you in a lot of trouble Harry. A lot of really bad trouble."

"You could try," Harry flatly replied. The first line had made it plenty obvious that this was a power play to blackmail Harry, and he wasn't going to let the man get too far with it.

"I will. And I will succeed. The few friends you have left…your new family…you have put them in grave danger. Perha-"

"You can cut the monologue Lucius," he flatly said, interrupting the man, "If you want to use my actions this summer as leverage against me then you should remember that I am well aware of your involvement in the Hogwarts Massacre, and I will have no compunctions sharing it with anyone I need to."

Harry could feel Malfoy still beside him for a second before he replied, "Such accusations shouldn't be made lightly-"

"Come on Lucius. Are we going to play this game again?" Harry said, interrupting Malfoy again. Lucius was a creature of words, and not letting him say what he wanted to say could throw him off more than he'd admit. It was up to Harry to use this to his advantage. "You and I both know that you wanted to test me, and as ill thought out as doing what you did was, test me you did. I'm still here. Not a scratch. Besides, I have a feeling that you knew what you were giving Lisa Turpin. Or at least who it belonged to."

There was no mistaking it this time. Lucius had completely frozen.

"A…diary perhaps?" Harry carried on, "Belonging to your old Master. An artifact that you knew was capable of dangerous things, but didn't know how."

"How do you know what it was?" Lucius asked, his voice considerably lower than before.

Harry smiled. It was time for his bullshitting ability to shine, "I had a nice long chat with the spirit of your old master that resided in that diary before I erased him from existence."

"You _what_?"

"It was quite enlightening actually. He was quite insistent about his superiority over me right until I destroyed him. I don't presume your Master will be happy about you being the cause of the destruction of such a…valuable artefact…when he returns."

Lucius was outright staring at him now, his eyes filled with fear, "You're lying. You are making this up."

Harry chuckled, ignoring Lucius's statement, "It's rather funny actually. Throughout this entire sequence of events, _nothing_ went right for you. I broke into your home. The Heir started attacking purebloods. You put your son in danger and ended up killing several of your allies' children. Even your desperate attempt at getting Lisa killed failed completely."

Lucius's eyes widened, "It was _you_. But how? You were in the court at the time!"

"I have my people Lucius, and unlike Voldemort's, mine are actually competent."

"You dare utter his name-" Lucius started aggressively.

"Yes I dare," Harry said, "I dare utter your filthy Master's name in front of you because once word of your actions gets out, he won't protect you… _no one_ will protect you. Voldemort, the pureblood society, Ministry, Death Eaters…they will all turn on you after they learn of what you did. The only one who can protect you is me. Voldemort is your past, Lucius. _I_ am the future."

Sensing it was time to amp up the pressure to a thousand, Harry sent a massive tendril of his mana into his blood, wrenching his blood down to a crawl with as much effort as he could. Malfoy swayed, grabbing onto his cane tightly to support himself.

"You may bear his Mark, but you are _my_ pawn. You have been ever since I laid eyes on you."

Trembles rocked through Lucius's body as the symptoms of low blood pressure really started to set in. His breathing shallowed, and he repeatedly kept blinking to keep his focus on Harry's face.

"What…what are you doing to me?" he stuttered out, trying to keep his balance.

"Showing you power," Harry said, letting a hint of his Bloodlust ability slip into his voice, " ** _Real_ power**. There are a hundred different ways I could end your life right here Lucius. There are a hundred reasons why I should. Be grateful that I'm choosing not to. Go home. Take your time. Try out some more of your pathetic manipulations. And when you fail, learn to embrace the future."

With that, Harry let go of his control over Malfoy's blood.

Ping!

 **Due to repeated use, you have levelled up a skill!**

 **Wandless Magic Lv- 12 (2%)**

 **Allows you to control your magic in without a conduit. You can try to use it in anyway you wish and it will obey your every command. Has various discoverable branches.**

 **Branches:**

 **Hydromancy: Allows you to control water in any form.**

 **Cost-65 MP per minute**

 **Pyromancy: Allows you to control fire in any form.**

 **Cost-60 MP per minute**

 **Geomancy: Allows you to control earth in any form.**

 **Cost-70 MP per minute**

 **Aeromancy: Allows you to control air in any form.**

 **Cost-80 MP per minute**

Ping!

 **Skill leveled up twice due to ruthless use!**

 **Blackmailing Lv- 12 (18%)**

 **This is your ability to make another person do something you want by expressly using some sort of leverage against them. The higher the level, the more chance of success!**

 **(26 + Lv of Bullshitting)% chance of success, less based on how extreme the demand is.**

Ping!

 **You have leveled up a skill once by concentrated use!**

 **Politics Lv- 6 (12%)**

 **This is your ability to maneuver in political situations by methods of persuasion, blackmail, guile and manipulation. The higher the level, the more chance of success!**

 **(Lv of Lying + Lv of Bullshitting)% chance of success, less based on how extreme the motive is.**

Ping!

 **A skill has leveled up due to ridiculous overuse!**

 **Theatrics, Lv- 10 (30%)**

 **You have a penchant for the grand, a wish to bedazzle and the desire to intimidate. This skill helps you achieve it.**

Harry waved away the windows, idly musing on how ridiculous it was that he got more level ups to skills by blackmailing Malfoy than knocking out a sixty foot basilisk and taking down the spirit of a Dark Lord.

At least the amount of exp he'd gotten for that was humongous.

It took Malfoy moment to compose himself, after which he promptly got up from Nicholas's seat and left, drawing quite a few eyes when he almost stumbled and fell on his way out of the Waiting room.

Harry watched him leave with muted satisfaction.

" _Are you sure you want to let him be?_ " echoed Hedwig's voice in his mind, scaring the shit out of Harry, who had almost forgotten that she was even there, " _He could make things really hard for you_ "

"Let him try it," Harry said with a smile once he recovered, "The only thing hard about it is going to be his life if he makes a single move against me."

" _It's not a joking matter Harry,_ " Hedwig's voice was reprimanding as it echoed in his mind, " _He seems dangerous._ "

Harry shook his head, before giving her a serious reply, "As dangerous as he is, I am more so. I wasn't kidding when I told him that there are a hundred ways I could end him. If not anything else I could just drop him into a zombie ID and leave him there. We'd see how Lucius Malfoy fares against a Legion zombie or a Dementor."

" _So why not end him now? He is a greedy, power-hungry politician and unrepentant murderer who is also an alcoholic and beats his son. Even I have no wish to see him live on._ "

"I know," Harry said, frowning as he tried to think of how to best verbalize his intentions, "But I'm thinking long term. He seems on the fence about following me, and when Voldemort comes back again he could be an important asset to have. So far whenever I've met Voldemort, I've had the element of surprise. Next time he'll be prepared, and I need to be too. Lucius is part of that preparation."

" _So we are overlooking the bad things he did in favor of the benefits he can give? For the…greater good, so as to speak?_ "

The accusatory tone in Hedwig's voice was subtle, yet it hit Harry hard.

He had been disgusted at first when Professor Snape had told him about Dumbledore working for the Greater Good when the Headmaster had tried to test him by manipulating him into going after the Philosopher's Stone back in his first year. He had even told Hedwig about his discomfiture with the idea.

How was he any better?

He was letting Lucius's crimes slip…he was letting Draco suffer at the hands of his father, just so that he could save more lives later down the line when Voldemort inevitably returned.

"You think I shouldn't?" Harry's voice was unsure when he asked Hedwig this question.

Hedwig's voice lacked any edge when she replied, " _I'm not your moral compass Harry. I stay with you as long as you have your heart in the right place. If you would have shot that arrow through Lisa's heart without listening to me back then, I would still have stayed with you. It's not up to me to decide what is good or bad. I can only see your intention, and your intention every time, even now, has been to do good. The definition of that good, however, is for you to decide. Not me. Not anyone else_. _You_."

Harry thought over it for a while, before he hesitantly replied, "I…I want to do this. For now at least. Logic tells me that Voldemort would be more devastating a problem that Lucius is now. I can counter Lucius, maybe even control him to some degree, but Voldemort is just…destruction. I could just take Malfoy out after Voldemort is gone for good."

" _If that is what you think is right, then I'm with you. All the way."_

There was nothing but pure honesty in Hedwig's voice when she said that, and Harry appreciated it.

They lapsed into silence after that, Harry pondering the conversation that he had just had with his phoenix familiar and Hedwig going back to whatever she did to entertain herself in Harry's pocket.

As long as she didn't try to peck Harry's nipple off, he wasn't going to complain.

Soon, Nicholas came out of the Interrogation room and they headed out into the 2nd Floor corridor, where Nicholas told Harry to wait for him for a second and promptly excused himself to the bathroom.

As Harry waited, he curiously watched the uniformed people who walked in and out of the door to the Auror Headquarters, levitating baskets full of rocks in front of them.

Inconspicuously walking closer to the stream of people who were walking in and out of the huge pair of doors, Harry listened for any indication of what was actually going on. His answer came fairly soon in the form of a bearded Auror standing just outside the doors who was loudly giving instructions to a younger looking Auror who was apparently a Trainee.

"Oi Jeremy! I need you to get this to the Department of Magical History." The older of the two said, handing his own basket full of rocks over to the younger Auror, who seemed to be trembling with nervousness.

"Sir! Yes, sir!" the younger Auror nervously said as he took the basket, "If it's alright to ask sir, what are these?"

"Just a bunch of rocks and things from the Chamber of Secrets," the older Auror nonchalantly said, "The guys over at the Department of Magical History are trying to see if any of these are magic or not."

"Sir! Understood sir!"

"Oh shut up," the older Auror grumbled as he headed back into the Auror Headquarters, "Loosen up a little will ya."

The younger Auror looked downtrodden, but Harry didn't have his focus on that. He had something else on his mind.

'The rocks could be magical? What did _that_ mean? Did they have some sort of strange properties? Were they layered with listening charms or something?' he curiously thought.

Quickly switching to Mage Sight before Jeremy the Auror could take the baskets out of sight, Harry looked over the piles upon piles of rocks.

There was no significant glow coming from the rocks that anyone in the stream of people around him was carrying, that could signify any significant magic, but what was interesting was the greenish rectangular shaped glow that shone through the pile of rocks in Jeremy's basket.

Frowning, Harry cast an Observe on it.

 **Founders Clue #2!**

 **Memory Page (2/4)**

 **A piece of paper capable of showing the user a pre-programmed memory once the paper's password is written on it. This particular memory page was created 982 AD.**

 **Password: Speak to me Slytherin. Scourge of the Hogwarts Four**

Harry's eyes widened as he read the Observe screen.

That day, the paper that had been inconspicuously lodged between the rocks of Jeremy the Auror's basket never made it to the Department of Magical History.

* * *

Margaret Turpin had mixed feelings about her daughter being kidnapped from her jail cell.

On one hand, it was hard to argue that it was not a good thing, considering the fact that she would surely have been sentenced to Azkaban or even Kissed if she had been brought to the court. But on the other hand, now her little girl was out there alone, hurt and damaged as she was being hunted by the Law Enforcement. And worst of all, she, her mother, had no idea where she was.

All those thoughts and more idly churned through her mind as she washed the silverware for the third time. There was no point to it. No one other than the occasional guest even used the silverware, and she hadn't really had any guests ever since the Trial debacle had started.

At this point, the chores were just there as a distraction from the dark thoughts that threatened to take her over every single day.

A persistent knock on the window glass startled Margaret out of her thoughts. Swiftly turning around, she looked at the kitchen window before sighing with relief.

It was Birdabo, her boss Esther's tawny owl.

Opening the window, she let the bird in, taking the envelope tied to his leg before serving up a bowl of water for the avian messenger. With a tired hoot, Birdabo started drinking it up.

Margaret opened the envelope, and a note and a second envelope fell out. Picking up the note, she read through it first.

 _Dear Margaret,_

 _You won't BELIEVE this! Oh my goodness, I'm SO happy for you! The letter came in to the office this morning, and I know you're on leave today but I just couldn't wait for you to come back in tomorrow._

 _Oh and accept it. That's an order. A change of air will do you good._

 _Love,_

 _Esther McGoogly_

Curious about what was in the other envelope now, Margaret tore it open, pulling out the letter inside.

 _Margaret Turpin,_

 _This is to inform you that due to your exemplary work in previous projects with the Ministry of Magic in the Archives section, you have been chosen as the Ministry's Research Assistant and Ambassador to the Nepalese government._

 _Since Nepal is not a member of the ICW and is not a region with strong diplomatic ties to Britain, you will be working alongside Albus Dumbledore to strengthen our ties with them while studying their rich culture and magic as well as the ways of the people of that region._

 _This new promotion comes with several benefits, including a raised salary and Ministry provided housing during your visit to Nepal. However, it is mandatory for you to leave for Nepal as soon as possible for a very long stay there._

 _Please contact Albus Dumbledore for further details._

 _Signed: Gregory Marlin (Head of British Ministry of Magic Employment Services)_

 _Cosigned: Albus Percival Wulfric Dumbledore (Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorcerer, Chief Warlock, Supreme Mugwump, International Confederation of Wizards)_

Margaret stared at the letter with an open jaw for a moment, before she folded the letter up and looked around at her house.

This house had been her everything for decades now…her husband…Lisa…All those memories…it felt like a cage at times, binding her to phantom responsibilities and obligations that she no longer had but felt like she did.

She sighed before a soft smile spread across her face.

Maybe Esther was onto something. A change of air might just do her some good.

* * *

That night at the stroke of midnight, in a hidden alley in the darkest corner of Hogsmeade, a small ring of green flame appeared, undulating and rotating and flickering free of gravity. The fire twisted and turned upon itself, slowly feeding and filling up the inside of the ring as it grew, casting its flickering light onto the walls of the alleyway.

After a few minutes, when it had grown enough, it halted, stopping its movements. For a moment, it was as if time stood still. And just as suddenly as it had appeared, the flames flared, and the fire's intensity tripled, blinding any onlooker that might have been looking.

And then it disappeared.

The only thing that it left behind in its place was a man who hadn't been there before, lying face down on the snowy pavement.

It was a long while before the man moved, and when he did his movements were weak and tired. His hands trembled as he pushed himself up onto his feet, and his legs shook as they struggled to hold his weight. As much as he looked like someone in his late twenties, his battered and tired state spoke of…something more.

Once he had supported himself on the wall, the man pulled out his wand from his pocket.

" _Accio glasses_ ," he incanted hoarsely, and a pair of round glasses came flying from the floor into his hands. By some miracle, they had survived the entire debacle intact. The man put them on, blinking rapidly as the world around him shifted to focus.

Slowly, he moved, step after shaky step as he headed out of the shaded alleyway and into the larger path it linked up to.

Once he made it out into the pathway, the man looked up, searching for something in the skyline that he soon found. Beyond the sloped roofs of the charming cottages and shops that made up Hogsmeade, in the distance rose the Hogwarts Castle, majestically standing proud in the moonlight.

Bright green eyes drank in the sight of the Castle like it was life-saving nectar. Almost as if on its own, his hand lifted up to touch his forehead, his fingers gently tracing the outline of his lightning bolt scar.

* * *

 **Ooooooh baby! Time Travel in Book 3! Yep! An older Harry from the future has arrived back in time, and not all is as it seems with him! What could he want? What havoc will this situation wreck?! Find out in Book 3!** **Let me know what you thought of Book 2.**

 **Obviously, I won't be speed-updating Book 3, since I'll be writing as I post, so don't expect any more crazy triple updates, but I hope to keep the updates coming regularly.**


	40. Outtakes-II:Omake Files

Outtakes:

Omake #1: Understated Tale

 _Context: Harry is going down the sink in Myrtle's bathroom._

Harry cast a Bombarda on the sink, exploding it to pieces. If he somehow didn't make it, then at least people who couldn't speak Parseltongue; people like Aurors and investigators; would be able to enter the chamber. He grabbed onto Hedwig's legs as she lifted him up, and together, they descended down into the pipe.

It was like slowly going down a slimy, dark slide.

He could see more pipes branching off in all directions, but none as large as theirs, which twisted and turned, sloping steeply downwards. He knew that they were flying slowly deeper below the school than even the dungeons. It was eerily quiet, with no other sound around except the occasional tip tap of water and the rhythmic flapping of Hedwig's wings above him.

After a minute or so of careful maneuvering, the pipe leveled out, and he dropped down onto the slimy, damp floor of a dark stone tunnel large enough to stand in. Hedwig fluttered down onto his shoulder as he looked around the tunnel.

"We must be miles under the school-" Harry started to say, but suddenly, a loud Ping in his ears interrupted him, and a large black box with white borders, unlike any Game window he had seen, popped up.

PING!

 **Long ago, two races ruled over Earth: HUMANS and MONSTERS.**

 **One day, war broke out between the two races.**

 **After a long battle, the humans were victorious.**

 **They sealed the monsters underground with a magic spell.**

 **Many years later...**

 **Hogwarts 1993**

 **Legends say that those who fall into the Chamber never return.**

Harry read the text with wide eyes. What did that mean? Was the Basilisk the monster that was _caged_ here? Was this not its home…but a prison? And why was the Game showing this to him now?!

Hedwig tweeted with concern, wondering why Harry had suddenly frozen.

"It's-" Before he could even tell her what was happening, another window, just like the first one, popped up with a keyboard screen underneath.

Ping!

 **Name: Name the fallen human.**

Hesitating for a second, Harry turned to Hedwig and said, "It's the Game. Something is wrong with it."

The reply was a curious trill, and Harry merely shrugged before typing in his name.

 **Harry Potter**

 **Is this name correct?**

 **No / Yes**

The window disappeared as soon as Harry pressed Yes, and suddenly, a single yellow flower flickered into existence.

"Er…Are you seeing what I'm seeing Hedwig?" Harry asked disbelievingly.

A confused chrip was all he got.

"Green stalk, yellow petals, white center with a smiley face? None of it?"

Hedwig chirped confusedly.

Suddenly, the Flower looked at him and smiled, and a black box with white edges popped up in front of it.

 **Howdy! I'm FLOWEY! FLOWEY the FLOWER!**

Harry developed a sudden twitch in his left eye.

 **Hmmm... You're new to the UNDERGROUND, aren'tcha? Golly, you must be so confused! Someone ought to teach you how things work around here! I guess little old me will have to do. Ready? Here we go!**

He didn't have the chance to do anything before suddenly yet another large black screen appeared. Just as Harry was about to yell that he didn't request a UI change, yet another black box appeared, this time larger than any of the others.

A black and white version of the Flower appeared on the top half of the screen, and a square with a red heart inside it appeared on the bottom half.

A small dialog box opened up underneath the Flower's image and started showing conversational text again.

 **See that heart?**

"No," Harry said, just for the heck of it. But the game wasn't apparently taking verbal cues today, and the Flower's dialogue continued showing up on the screen.

 **That is your SOUL, the very culmination of your being! Your SOUL starts off weak, but can grow strong if you gain a lot of LV.**

"Great," Harry muttered aggravated, "As if a Basilisk and the school closing down wasn't enough, now I have new game mechanics to learn! Fucking amazing!"

Poor Hedwig was looking around wildly, wondering what Harry was angry at.

The Flower's dialogue box did not have a digestive system, hence it didn't give a shit and continued on.

 **What does LV stand for?**

"Levels"

 **Why, LOVE, of course!**

Harry slammed his hand into his face, grumbling, "Fuck me sideways and hang me up by my anus. Why me? Why now?"

 **You want some LOVE, don't you?**

"Please No. I'm trying to save my school here Game. Don't screw with me."

 **Don't worry! I'll share some with you! Down here, LOVE is spread through** **…** **little white** **…** **friendliness pellets.**

Suddenly five little white dots emerged from the Flower.

And with that, Harry decided that he'd had was enough. He could go along with stupid dialogue boxes. He could cope with new Game mechanics. He could do many things.

But eating a flower's…love seed…wasn't one of those things.

Powering up a massive fireball in his hand, Harry tossed it at the three dimensional flower that had been standing in front of him through all this.

WHOOSH!

And the flower went up in flames.

Suddenly, time itself crawled to a stop. The water dripping from the ceiling halted midair, the flames from the fire that Harry had started stopped flickering.

Everything stopped.

Two entities, one man and one woman, the same who had given Harry his powers, appeared, undetectable to the world around them. The woman walked up to Harry, and examined the screen in front of him, which seemed perfectly visible to her.

She sighed, "Please don't tell me you were screwing with Harry Potter's powers."

"I…wasn't?"

The woman glared.

"What!" the man muttered the defensively, "I wasn't. I was playing Undertale. That new magical computer I'd conjured up to play it on must have screwed with the magic somehow. My game's save file must have appeared here."

The woman didn't seem to care for that explanation very much. "Undertale isn't made until two _decades_ later. Conjuring a magical computer is stupid. Breaking the rules of _time_ to play a _video game_ is…I can't even find the words for how dumb that is! Just fix Potter."

The man sheepishly nodded, before he walked over to look at Harry's screen. His eyes widened and flew to the fire on the ground ahead.

"He…" he muttered, seemingly in shock, "He killed _Flowey_! At the start of the Game! Now I'm _never_ going to get that Pacifist ending."

"Shut up and fix it!"

" _Fine_!" the man snapped, before clapping his hands. The fire and the black windows disappeared, and Harry's temple glowed from inside for a second. "There you go. His memory is erased and his powers are fixed. This should do it."

"Good," the woman said, "Now let's get out of here."

And just like that, they disappeared, and the world resumed again.

* * *

Omake #2 Sirius Situation

 _Context: For the first time Harry saw Padfoot, I had an alternate end planned for his Observe. It was inspired by a comment I saw online and is pretty fucking stupid._

Ding!

The elevator opened, and Harry barely had time to register a giant black dog with a tennis ball in its mouth flying at him before he got tackled down to the floor with an 'Oomph'.

Nicholas's chuckles erased Harry's hopes for a prompt rescue. Stuck, and not being able to see _anything_ , much less see whatever name was hovering above the animal, Harry cast an Observe at the underbelly of the dog, wondering if this was Sir Knucklehead Fudducker McSpazzatron, Mr. Fortescue's ill-named dog.

The Observe window popped up close to Harry's face.

 **Sirius Black**

 **Lv-37**

 **HP-15200/15200**

 **MP-8100/8100**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-18**

 **Vit-31**

 **Dex-29**

 **Int-32**

 **Wis-20**

 **Luc-11**

 **Sirius Black, also known as Padfoot or Sir Knucklehead Fudducker McSpazzatron in his Animagus form is a wrongfully incarcerated prisoner of Azkaban. He disagrees with blood purity and fought against Lord Voldemort. When his friend Pettigrew betrayed the Potters, Sirius sought to exact revenge, but Pettigrew was able to frame Sirius and escape before he could do it. After 11 years in prison, he managed to escape unassisted.**

 **He is Harry's godfather and he loves him dearly**

 **Right now he is thinking :-**

" ** _Here's my ball. I like my ball. Would you throw my ball? If you'll throw my ball, I'll fetch it. I like my ball. My ball needs to be thrown. Please throw my ball. My ball is here. Would you please throw my ball? I'd really like to play with my ball. Here's my ball. This is my ball. You throw, I fetch. My ball is here. Did you see my ball? This is my ball. Here's my ball. Throw my ball, please?"_**

"Oh dear lord, Sir Knucklehead Fudducker McSpazzatron is Sirius Black," Harry muttered, shocked, "And he wants me to play with his balls."

* * *

Omake #3 Dobby is free

 _Context: A stupid scene I wrote while I was half-asleep and too tired to think straight._

It was a rather parched summer day when Lucius Malfoy was busy in his office looking through his copies of Wizengamot trials transcripts. Manipulating trials often involved taking in a huge amount of information, and that in turn involved a number of hours reading.

Finishing up the transcript of _Button v Boobie 1992_ , Lucius reached out to grab the bottle of whiskey sitting on his table.

Picking it up was much easier than he'd expected, which meant he had finished it without realizing it.

Again.

"Dobby!" Lucius Malfoy called, "Bring me a bottle of whiskey from the cellar!"

The seconds passed, but no shuddering elf appeared with a bottle in its arms. Lucius frowned.

"Dobby!" he called, louder this time, "Where is my whiskey you little pest!"

Nothing.

Irritated, Lucius put a paperweight on top of his transcripts and stood up, walking around his desk and out of the door of his office. He'd go find the little wretch, and then give it a well-deserved lashing.

Soon, Lucius reached the cupboard that he knew the elf slept in and slammed the door open.

" _What_ are you-" he started angrily before he saw the sight inside and stopped short.

Dobby the house-elf was staring at him, not cowering as he had expected, but with giant bulbous eyes full of determination.

In his right hand he grasped a half-filled plastic- _muggle_ \- water bottle, and in his other hand, he grasped a paper with a red wax seal on it.

 _The Ministry's seal._

Before Lucius could say anything, Dobby brandished the paper at him, "According to pre-arranged contract, I, Dobby does hereby accept the challenge from yous, Master Lucius Malfoy sir, to a Duel."

"Challenge from me?" Lucius muttered, before angrily asking, "What are you talking about elf?! Stop rambling and get back to work!"

Dobby grinned, "Dobby doesn't have to obey Master until the Duel is over. Contract says so. Dobby managed to slip this Contract that has Master challenging him into Master Malfoy sir's papers, and much to his surprise, Master actually signed it without looking! Poor Dobby was so happy!"

Lucius's eyes widened with shock before he grabbed the contract out of his elf's hands and read through it.

Sure enough, it was an iron-clad contract with his own signature at the bottom, challenging his _own bloody house elf_ to a Duel! The only way out of this was to duel Dobby.

Throwing the contract aside, Lucius stared at Dobby, hatred burning in his eyes. Pulling out his wand, he brandished it like a whip.

" _Fine!_ I'll duel you, and I will end your miserable little life for attempting to betray me like this."

The grin that split the house-elf's wrinkled face sent shivers down Lucius's spine.

"Not so fast Master. Dobby wonders if Master read the contract at all. It clearly says the challenged chooses the method of Dueling."

Lucius gritted his teeth, "Fine then. What do you choose?"

"Bottle flipping," the elf said, holding up the plastic water bottle it was holding.

" _What?_ "

"I, Dobby, challenges you to a Bottle Flipping Challenge! You's must flip a half-filled bottle so that it rotates midair and land perfectly upright without using any magics. Does you accept?"

Lucius was staring at the mad house-elf, half angry, half plain confused. Regardless, he had no choice but to accept. "I do."

Dobby threw the plastic bottle at him, and Lucius grabbed it midair, before holding it by its neck.

'How hard could it be,' he thought, before kneeling down and giving a powerful flick to the bottle, sending it flying up.

The bottle landed on its side with a thud.

Dobby grinned, before running over to pick up the bottle.

Grabbing it by the neck, he took a deep break and gave it a gentle flick. And almost as if in slow motion, the bottle flipped, the bottom rotating away from the elf as it slowly rotated upon itself, before arcing down and landing upright with a thud.

Dobby stared at the upright bottle for a second, tears filling his eyes, "Dobby did it . . . Dobby is… _free_."

And before Lucius could say anything, or indeed fully comprehend what had just happened, the elf disappeared with a pop and reappeared right in front of his nose.

"Dobby has been pissing in Master's whiskey!" he said with a grin before disappearing with a final 'po'.

* * *

HARRY'S CURRENT STATS

Harry Potter

Health-1975/1975

Mana-1675/1675

The Gamer

Title-The Boy who Lived

Level-14 Exp-441990/790000

Race-Wizard

STR-33

VIT-30(+4)=34

DEX-26(+4)=30

INT-44

WIS-48

LUC-27

POINTS-45

MONEY- 14025£ / 3697G 188S 56K

Harry Potter is a wizard, the son of Lily Potter and James Potter. He is a fledgling wizard at Hogwarts. He likes hanging with his new friends and divides his time between figuring out insanely complicated political manipulations and honing his unusual magical skills as the Gamer in secret. Harry loves his parents, and wants to help the world they died protecting.

Status- wizard, giving Harry +4 VIT, +4 DEX and the ability to control magic, talk to snakes, control his appearance and look cool.

* * *

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS

 **Story Questions**

 **Q1 - When will you start posting the next Book?**

A – Very soon, hopefully. Prologue is already done and I'm halfway through the first chapter. Hopefully, I'll be able to pull off bi-weekly uploads. Maybe even weekly. No promises, but I'll definitely try.

 **Q2 – How do you keep track of all the Gamer Skills and Stats throughout the story?**

A – I have a Spreadsheet with everything categorized into Combat, Magic, Mental, and Maxed Out that I use to keep track of the Skills. I also keep track of the Stats, Titles, and Incomplete Quests that way. The spreadsheet gets updated after every single chapter is posted.

 **Q3 – How long do you think it'll take for all the Books to be finished?**

A – No idea. I know that there may not be a lot of people left in the fandom to read once I'm done. I know it might take years. But I'll keep writing. Slowly but surely, I'll complete this. This is my pet project after all.

 **Q4 - Will all the books continue in this single story?**

A –Yes. All the Books will be in this single story, Harry Potter and the Game.

 **Gamer Questions**

 **Q1 - What was that about Dumbledore talking about having met people who can travel between dimensions? Isn't ID Create a Gamer ability?**

A – Almost all Gamer abilities are variations of already existing magic in the Wizarding World. That's something that I've alluded to many times before.

A more ' _meta_ ' answer would be that I've always wanted to use IDs in more Plot-relevant occasions. Harry using Zombie ID to beat Riddle was one such occasion. Him not being the only one with the Ability will lead to even more interesting opportunities for me to write.

 **Q2 – Why don't you put the Gamer Stats at the end of every chapter so that readers can keep track of them easier?**

A –It would have increased the length of the chapters by a lot without adding any content as well as been annoying to a lot of people, and I really didn't feel comfortable with doing long ANs every chapter. As a solution, I'm working to set up a Spreadsheet that you guys can check out to keep track of Stats whenever you want to. I'll link to that in my Profile once it's done and uploaded.

If you have any other ideas then I'm all ears.

 **Plot Questions**

 **Q1 – Who the _fuck_ was that at the end of the Epilogue?**

A – Without giving away too many spoilers, I'll just say that it is an older Harry arriving at the current time. He is also the reason why I'm pants-off-the-wall excited about writing the next Book.

 **Q2 - Why did you not show more of Luna in this book?**

A - Luna is a character whose portrayals are always debated about heavily, both amongst writers and readers. When I wrote Luna, I was pretty unsure of my portrayal, which was why I didn't want to use her too much without knowing if anyone actually liked how I did it.

Thankfully, you guys loved her, and you'll be seeing much more of her in Book 3.

 **Q3 – This Book was noticeably darker than the first, especially with Dean's death and Lisa's trial arc. Why did you decide to use that tone?**

A – I'll be honest. Around the end of the First Book, I was growing a bit tired of the story. I was losing inspiration, and writing and updating was starting to become tedious. But I was determined not to abandon it, so I created an adversary and a plan that would have many ramifications for the story. Ramifications that would allow me to create plotlines that would span throughout the upcoming Books as well as get my interest back into the story.

 **Q4 – Have you decided which School Harry will go to next year?**

A – I have a tentative idea, but it's subject to change depending on how the plot planning turns out. What do you guys think? Which School would _you_ like to see in the next Book?

 **Random Reviewer Questions**

 **Q1 – Chapter24 - Will we see more of the Founder's Quest and Founder's memories in Book 3?**

A – You will. Founder's Quest is going to be one of the major plot points in Book 3, as well as finding out who gave Harry his Powers. Both are intimately interlinked, and both will be very important.

 **Q2 – Chapter28 - Your explanation of Alchemy is, as far as I have come across, completely unique. Generally, people focus on equivalent exchange, rather than the deeper scientific route of changing something's atomic makeup. Are there any more ideas you have related to Alchemy?**

A – Thank you. I do have many ideas about Alchemy that I'll be using throughout the Books. I wanted to portray Alchemy as a very precise form of magic to give it a very scientific feel, and I have a bunch of ideas in that vein that I'm really excited to write.

* * *

 **Cheers for all the support! Prologue for next book coming within a few days!**


	41. Prologue-III:Alea Iacta Est

**Hello! You made it to Book 3!**

 **That means you made it through Book 2 in one piece! A hundred and a five virtual cupcakes to you for continuing to read so far! I hope you're ready, because Book 3 is going to be awesome!**

* * *

 **Book Three: Source Code**

* * *

Prologue:

It had been a few days since the fateful hour when they'd found Sirius, and things had been going well, if a little monotonous.

Nicholas had been piling on book after book on Harry every day, telling him that his adventures at school had slowed down his Alchemy education by a fair bit. Harry knew that it wasn't the truth; he was running months ahead on his Alchemy; but he also suspected that his concerned guardian was trying to keep him occupied.

Finishing up with _Wands and Wanderers_ by _Kilote Tsundense_ , Harry pushed himself off the armchair he had been sitting on and headed further into library. The sound of wings flapping behind him made him raise his arm almost instinctively and Hedwig landed softly on it before hopping onto his shoulder.

" _How many more books do you have left to read?_ " she asked, ruffling her feathers impatiently.

"Just one," Harry replied as he walked past the Charms section, "And if you were feeling so impatient then you could just have kept on sleeping on the back of my armchair you know? I'd have woken you up after I was done."

" _I was getting bored of sleeping._ "

"How does one get bored of sleeping?" Harry asked amusedly as he put _Wands and Wanderers_ back into the spot where he had taken it from.

" _Well, it's obvious, isn't it? You sleep for too long, and then you're tired of doing it._ "

"Of course," Harry nodded, deciding not to point out that he had been asking a rhetorical question as he stood on his tiptoes to pull out the copy of _Flailing Your Arms to Do Things_. It sounded more like a weird yoga pose collection than a book on the theoretical concepts of wandless magic.

He had, of course, wondered why Nicholas had been asking him to read so many books on wandless magic instead of Alchemy, but figuring that questioning the man's teaching methods would do him no good, Harry pretty much did what he was told to. Besides, Nicholas was as much of an expert on Alchemy as anyone could be, and if he wanted to teach him wandless magic before starting on even more alchemy, then it was just fine with him.

" _What's that?_ " Hedwig's voice suddenly echoed in his head, breaking him out of his thoughts.

"What's what?" Harry asked, looking towards where Hedwig was staring. The question, however, answered itself. On the bookcase opposite to the one he was standing near was a book. A dark, thick, velvet covered book with a bright yellow gemstone the size of an egg embedded onto the middle of its spine. The title of the book was written around the gem in hard-to-read curly script, faintly illuminated by the gem's shimmering glow.

 _Mirrors and Dimensions: A Guide to the Alternate Dimensions_

Harry could have sworn that the book hadn't been there when he had come into the library yesterday.

"Quite an interesting title you have there," he muttered as he reached for the book, only to jerk his hand back with a wince as the ward around the book stung him severely.

" _You really should have gotten into the habit to look before you touch things you're not supposed to touch,_ " Hedwig's chiding voice rang clear in Harry's head.

"You think I'd have learned by now," Harry agreed, healing the red welt on the back of his hand before extending his magic into the ward and pulling up Runic Burnout.

 **Runic Burnout Lv-6 (21%)**

 **A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. A common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.**

 **Do you wish to use it on: Cranciero Locking Ward?**

 **YES/NO**

Harry burned a small flame in his hand to keep the magic flowing and pressed yes. A small burst of magic washed his senses, and he knew that the ward was gone. Quickly pulling the book out of the shelf Harry looked it over. Other than the writing on its spine there was no other inscriptions on the velvet hard-cover.

Feeling curious, Harry cracked it open and read through the first paragraph of the Introduction page.

 _Introductions_

 _In my journeys through the wondrous countries of the far-east, one of the most interesting people I had encountered was Madam Yao. This book I am writing will contain all the knowledge I came upon during my stay under her hospitality._

 _The moment I lay eyes on her, I knew she was a woman of great power. She was polite, if a bit presumptive; perhaps due to her eastern upbringing; and offered me shelter for however long I wished. She had not heard of the lores of the west before, and was curious about our customs and magic. Her wishes mirrored my own, since I was curious about her magic as well. I told her of our wandcasting, and our timekeeping methods; she was particularly amused to know that the year at the time we met was 1789; and she, in return told me of the Dimensions. Entire worlds existing parallel to our own, some mirroring our own existence, and some drastically different. Her magic, and that of those she taught, was capable of building a bridge from our own world to one of those parallel dimensions._

 _One particular Dimension that Madam Yao frequented was called the 'Diastasi Kathrefti'. The Dimension mirrored our own, near identical, but lacking in any moving objects or living beings. Nothing that happened there would ever affect our Reality. She used it for practice and training her students, since the user's Magic flowed better due to the lack of any resisting magic in the atmosphere there._

Harry would have continued reading, fascinated by this account of something that seemed like his own IDs, but a sudden ringing noise broke his attention.

Ping!

 **Due to reading a specialised book, a skill has levelled up!**

 **ID Create, Lv-8 (16%)**

 **Used to create Instant Dungeons. Higher the level, stronger the dungeon.**

 **Current list-**

 **Empty Dungeon- no monsters.**

 **Monster Dungeon- Zombies**

 **Restriction Dungeon- Random Opponent Spawn**

 **Ping!**

 **Due to constant use, a skill has levelled up!**

 **ID Escape, Lv-8 (16%)**

 **Used to escape from Instant Dungeons.**

Harry's jaw fell open. ID Create and ID Escape were two skills that he used _beyond_ regularly. Despite so much use, he had only managed to level up the skills _twice_ throughout the entirety of the last year.

This Book had leveled it up with less than _30 seconds_ of reading.

'I'm keeping this,' Harry decided resolutely as he opened up his inventory and dropped the book into it. Much to his shock, the book fell right through his inventory grid and smacked into the ground.

Ping!

 **Inventory Input Rejected!**

 **Error: Object is shielded against Dimensional Magic!**

Harry picked up the book and stared at it, completely flummoxed. There was magic to shield against Inventory? Did that mean his IDs could be shielded against too? And was that Madam Yao which the book talked about the same person who was Nicholas's friend? The one who was giving asylum to Sirius and Lisa? The book mentioned the year 1789 as the year the author had met her. Was she just really old or was she somehow staying immortal like the Flamels?

Suddenly, the library door opened with a loud creak, and Nicholas's voice rang through the bookcases, "Harry! Have you finished the work I gave you?"

Harry was already flustered, and he grew even more flustered as he heard the steps nearing his spot. Panicking, he stuffed the book down the first hiding place he could think of just as Nicholas rounded the corner and came into the view.

The elder man was about to say something to Harry, but as soon as his eyes fell on him, he stopped, and he stared.

"I've just got one book left from the ones you asked me to read," Harry said, trying to play it cool.

" _You're not fooling him,_ " Hedwig candidly commented inside his head.

"Shut up," Harry hissed under his breath.

Nicholas seemed to have broken out of his tizzy while Harry was having his little back and forth with Hedwig.

"Harry?"

"Yes, Nicholas?" Harry asked, forcing a polite smile onto his face.

"Is that very obvious book shaped bulge in your pants a very rare book about Dimensions that I acquired in order to better understand your abilities and train you how to use them better which you were not supposed to touch anytime soon?"

"Er…no?"

"What is it then?"

"Well I'm a growing boy," Harry replied conversationally, "Hormones are happening. This is normal."

Nicholas's voice had gone entirely flat, "So you have an erection."

"Yes."

"That is shaped like a book."

"…yes?"

"You have a book penis," Nicholas said, his flat tone unwavering.

"…I feel like you're just mocking me right now," Harry pointed out.

"Really? How could you tell?"

"I don't know," Harry replied, "Something in your tone."

Nicholas sighed, before strictly saying, "If I put a ward around something, it should be obvious that I don't want you to touch it. I allow you leeway with a lot of things, but if you are going to be my Apprentice then you will obey me when it comes to your education. That includes waiting to learn things at appropriate times. Write that down. Memorize it. Tattoo it onto the insides of your eyelids if you have to. Is that understood?"

Harry gingerly nodded.

"I'm glad," Nicholas said, his tone lightening, "Now go put the book back. You've learned enough theory for now. We're having another practical lesson today."

Harry's eyes widened. It had been almost an entire year since he had gotten his first practical Alchemy lesson. It had been about Transmutation and it's applications in Alchemy, and that one lesson had practically revolutionized the way he saw magic. If Nicholas had really decided to give him another one of those, then he _really_ didn't want to piss him off and make him change his mind.

Quickly putting the book back where he had got it from, Harry excitedly followed Nicholas as he led them both out of the Library.

"Go put your winter cloak on. We're going outside for this one," Nicholas said, sending Harry hurrying off to his room, where he set Hedwig down on her perch and filled her feed bowl with chunks of a Wonko's Chocolate Bar. Once she was occupied, Harry grabbed his thick winter cloak out of his wardrobe and put it on before quickly heading back out to meet Nicholas, who had put on his own cloak.

"We'll be back before the afternoon!" Nicholas yelled up the stairs to Perenelle before they headed out.

"Where are we going?" Harry eagerly asked as they made their way out of the apartment.

"How about I tell you when we get there?" Nicholas said with a smile, closing the door behind them before offering Harry his hand.

With a small smile, Harry took it.

The next instant, hard ground left his feet and the world around him spun, a sudden jolt of pain ringing through his body as if he was being stretched out and then pushed through the eye of a needle. Before he had even managed to fully comprehend the pain, Harry's feet hit the rocky ground, and it was gone. They had apparated successfully to wherever their destination was.

"That was painful," Harry groaned as he rested his hands on his knees and looked around.

They had landed on what looked like a beautiful island beach, with the sun heading down the sky at the oceanic horizon in front of them and a small jungle behind of them. From the way the beach curved out of sight on both sides, it looked like the island they were on wasn't very large at all.

Nicholas, who seemed to be completely fine, replied, "Long distance apparitions often are."

Harry looked up warily at him, "How long is _long distance_?"

"About 8000 kilometers," Nicholas casually replied.

" _What?!_ " Harry blurted out in shock before quickly starting to throw out questions, "How? Where are we?"

"Practice and experience. We are standing on St. Nickleburg Island. A small hidden island 20 kilometers west of North America."

"And _why_ are we in a small island west of North America?" Harry asked warily.

Nicholas grinned, "To improve your wandless magic, of course."

"My wandless magic?" Harry asked, his wariness disappearing with the prospect of getting trained by Nicholas in one of his most prized skills, "Is that why you were having me read those books?"

"Indeed. More specifically, we will be focusing on earth-magic. Are you ready?"

"You bet," Harry said with a grin.

And so they began. First Nicholas made Harry slowly levitate a rock mid-air, before using enlargement charms to add more and more weight to the rock until he couldn't hold it up anymore despite his best efforts. The rock was of a fairly large size, but it was nowhere near as large as Harry had expected, leaving him a bit leery. Nicholas, however, seemed to find his performance satisfactory. Then, they headed further into a clearing in the small forest on the island where there was no sand, where he made Harry use the ground underneath to make various constructs and shapes, slowly refining his control and testing his limits with various tests and activities as the sky slowly turned less and less bright.

The more they practiced, the more worried Harry got. He had raised a _large field_ worth of spikes in an ID to clear out a horde of zombies once. Now, the best he could do was control the amount of dirt that weighed about as much as a car. It was nowhere in the realm of being bad, but his abilities seemed… stunted somehow.

After a particularly tiring exercise where Harry had to use discs of hardened soil to block spells Nicholas sent at him, they both sat down on a rock to rest for a bit and drink some water.

"You seemed distracted during the exercises Harry," Nicholas asked after they had both finished their water, "Is there anything on your mind?"

Harry hesitated for a second, before reminding himself that he was trying to be less secretive with the Flamels. Pushing his hesitation aside, he said, "I…I think something is stunting my powers. I've done a lot better than this…before."

Nicholas raised an eyebrow before astutely nailing what Harry was trying to say at once, "Was it in one of your Dimensions?"

Harry nodded, before taking another swig of his water. Nicholas turned to look ahead into the jungle. "How much of that book on Dimensions did you manage to read before I arrived?" he asked, seemingly out of the blue.

"I got about halfway through the Introduction."

"Then you already know why your abilities feel stunted to you," Nicholas calmly said, as if silently urging him to make the connection himself.

Harry frowned at him, before turning to stare at the ground underneath his feet, using Gamer's Mind to pull forth from his memory what he had read in the book, combing over the few lines he had read looking for whatever connection Nicholas wanted him to make.

And then it hit him.

 _One particular Dimension that Madam Yao frequented was called the 'Diastasi Kathrefti'. The Dimension mirrored our own, near identical, but lacking in any moving objects or living beings. Nothing that happened there would ever affect our Reality. She used it for practice and training her students, since the user's Magic flowed better due to the lack of any resisting magic in the atmosphere there._

This _'Diastasi Kathrefti'_ was sounding more and more like an ID the more Harry thought about it. And the phrase ' _the user's Magic flowed better due to the lack of any resisting magic in the atmosphere there_ ' was sounding more and more like what he was looking for.

"You understand, don't you, Harry?" Nicholas said from beside him.

"My abilities weren't stunted here," Harry replied out loud, "They were _enhanced_ inside the Dimension."

That was why his abilities didn't match up with the feats he had done in IDs, but matched much better with his previous exploits here in the real world. Feats like making an inclined earthen slide to catch his fall back in his first year when he had jumped off from a bit too high of a spot, and the time he had made a large earthen fist to hit Quirrell and save a Unicorn.

Nicholas nodded, "Your Dimension does not contain magic, which is why your own magic flows free there without resistance. But here, in our world, _everything_ has magic. The very air itself is filled with it, and every time you use your magic you are fighting against the resistance caused by the ambient magic around you."

Harry breathed a sigh of relief before the implications of this struck him.

"So…that means I'll never be as powerful as I am in the Dimension," Harry muttered dejectedly.

Nicholas turned to stare at him for a moment, before getting off the rock and onto his feet.

"Come on," he said, before heading off walking towards the beach. Confused, Harry followed. They walked through the forest until Nicholas stopped at a spot just at the edge of the forest where the setting sun and the ocean were clearly visible through the trees again. He dropped to his knees, resting a palm face down on the island floor, beckoning for Harry to do the same.

"Close your eyes," he instructed after Harry had knelt too, "and feel."

So Harry did. Closing his eyes, he let his magic spread through the ground, his thinner tendrils of mana following behind Nicholas's own stronger ones as they seeped through the small island's loamy fertile soil, then it's sandy beaches, and then down through the rock and gravel to where it was connected to the ocean bedrock with a giant natural pillar of stone.

Ping!

 **Due to extended use, a skill has levelled up multiple times!**

 **Area Sense, Lv-5 (10%)**

 **Allows the user to get a sense of the area around him/her. A more permanent version of the Supersensory Charm. The higher the level the more information is provided.**

 **Effective until 50 feet.**

Harry opened his eyes, willing the window away before asking, "What next?"

A wide grin spread across the elder man's face, "Watch."

Suddenly, Nicholas's fingers tensed and dug into the soil as his tendrils of magic tripled in strength, rooting themselves deep into the very structure of the island. Harry watched with wide eyes as Nicholas's brow twitched, and at the same time clearly felt through his magic as the pillar of stone connecting the island to the ocean bedrock shattered.

The entire island gave a giant shudder, and Harry's heart leaped into his mouth. He got ready to pull up his Hydromancy in case the water came rushing at them to drown them.

But to his utter shock, the island wasn't sinking like he was expecting it to…it was rising…slowly but surely floating up into the air.

The deafening roar of the water rushing in to fill the space where the island had been moments ago…the amount of power being channeled through the tendrils Nicholas had spread so meticulously throughout the entire structure of the island as he kept it all together with the sheer force of his will…the sense of the wind whipping up violently around them…Harry was being assaulted by sensory overload through both his magical and his physical senses.

In sharp contrast to his frenzied panicky state of mind, Nicholas had a wide grin on his face, and he looked as if he was having the time of his life.

Their elevation slowly continued on for a full heart-stopping minute, before they came to a stop roughly a hundred feet in the air, where even the lowermost portion of the island was above the water.

Harry stared wide-eyed at his guardian, blurting out the only thing that came to mind, " _What the fuck?_ "

Nicholas chuckled, "It's been a long while since I've used wandless magic at this scale. It feels incredible."

Harry decided that he must not have gotten through to him and repeated his question, " _What the fuck?!_ "

This time, Nicholas paused to look at him for a second before saying, "Calm yourself down Harry. Feel what I'm doing. Use your magic."

Harry didn't have to do much. His own magic was already spread throughout the island just like Nicholas's, only dozens of times more feeble.

He had a very clear sense of the scale of what was going on.

It was now more than ever before that Harry was seeing Nicholas for what he really was instead of the half-snarky guardian that he usually thought of him as. The centuries old wizard who had been honing and improving his magic since millennia…someone who had tamed Death itself…capable of feats of magic beyond any known to wizardkind.

It was humbling.

"Are you getting a sense of how it works?" Nicholas asked, his voice oddly calm as he kept his eyes fixed on Harry.

He nodded hesitantly.

"Then hold it together!" Nicholas barked, and suddenly let go of his magic.

It all happened within seconds.

The entire island remained suspended mid-air for a second, almost as if it; like Harry; couldn't quite believe what Nicholas had just done.

Then, it gave a humongous lurch and started falling. Instantly, Harry broke out of his shock and his magic, which had been merely observing what Nicholas had been doing suddenly gripped the island in an instinctive attempt to hold it together.

Pain unlike any pain he had ever experienced filled Harry's entire being. It was as if his muscles were turning into fire, and his bones felt like they were melting. Blood rushed through his ears as his heart started beating like a hummingbird. Through the blood and the rushing wind, he could hear large chunks of rock falling from the bottom of the island into the sea…he could feel the cracks forming through the entire structure…trees falling down around them…flashing red windows popping up in his vision.

Through all the pain and the noise, Nicholas's voice faintly reached Harry's ears, "…remember we are 20 kilometers away from the North American coast…let go then dozens of coastal villages…could drown…"

Had Harry been his normal self, he would have asked some smart questions. Questions like why Nicholas was such an idiot that he gave control to Harry in a place where people could die? Questions like why the fuck wouldn't he catch the island's fall if Harry let go?

However, he wasn't his normal self. He was in a nightmare of pain and magical overexertion.

Brainpower was a _little_ harder to come by while his insides felt like they were being torn apart, so Harry latched onto whichever words in the sentence that made sense and started using Gamer's Mind to focus his entire being away from the pain and onto the sentence.

 _People were going to die if he didn't hold this fucking island up._

He could faintly hear himself scream, why he didn't know, but it must have done something because the island around him slowed its fall a little.

Ping!

 **Due to some intense motherfucking use, you have leveled up a skill twice!**

 **Wandless Magic Lv- 14 (13%)**

 **Allows you to control your magic in without a conduit. You can try to use it in any way you wish and it will obey your every command. Has various discoverable branches.**

 **Branches:**

 **Hydromancy: Allows you to control water in any form.**

 **Cost-65 MP per minute**

 **Pyromancy: Allows you to control fire in any form.**

 **Cost-60 MP per minute**

 **Geomancy: Allows you to control earth in any form.**

 **Cost-60 MP per minute**

 **Aeromancy: Allows you to control air in any form.**

 **Cost-75 MP per minute**

At that point, Harry couldn't have cared less about a level up.

The island's fall slowing must have been good enough for whatever stupid sadistic test Nicholas was conducting, because his magic sprang into action and took over the weight from Harry, instantly stopping the island's fall with almost insulting ease.

Now free, Harry's magic snapped back right into him, throwing him onto his back on the cracked island floor, where he lay panting and heaving as he regained his breath as Nicholas gently lowered the island back into place, using his wand to set repair the stone pillar that used to hold the island up back into place.

He was too tired to care what magic Nicholas was using, but a dozen and a half wand waves and foreign incantations later, the beach was restored back into place, the trees were standing back upright, and the cracks on the ground were gone. After repairing everything back into place, Nicholas sat down on the floor beside where Harry was sitting.

"You did it, Harry," he said quietly, "You held up an entire island mid-air. Is that proof enough of your real potential? Do you still have any more worries about whether or not you will be as powerful as you are in one of your dimensions?"

Harry almost barfed out his guts as he pushed himself back into a sitting position and formulated a reply, "Next time…just…give an inspirational speech or something."

Nicholas chuckled, "I will. Apologies for how unpleasant it was."

"Apology _not_ accepted," Harry muttered, still feeling a bit woozy as he kept his eyes fixed on the sunset at the horizon to stop himself from throwing up, "I'm going to get my revenge. I'll think of something. I'll rub my underwear over your books or something."

There was a small pause, before Nicholas conceded, "I probably deserve it this time."

But Harry wasn't done. He had just noticed something.

The sun had set.

 _The sun had set!_

"You twat!" he spat at Nicholas, "We aren't anywhere _near_ North America. It was noon in London and it should be morning in North America. The sun just set here. We're in the Eastern Hemisphere."

Nicholas grinned, "Took your fair amount of time before noticing, didn't you? Of course, I wasn't going to let you kill a bunch of people by accident. We're about as far away from civilization as we can be right now."

Getting lied to, Harry decided, was _not_ fun.

"Get up," Nicholas said, the insufferable victorious grin still plastered on his face, "I need to get you back home. You have that sleepover thing with the Weasleys tonight don't you?"

"It's not a sleepover," Harry said indignantly as he pushed himself to his feet, and grabbed Nicholas's hand, "I'm staying there for most of tomorrow too."

They turned on the spot, and after another gut-wrenching ride back home, Harry quickly headed up to his room to go get ready to head over to the Weasleys later in the evening.

" _Was it fun?_ " Hedwig asked as Harry quickly put together a couple of clothes and few necessities into a duffel bag and ate the sandwiches Perenelle had left for him in his room.

"No _,_ " Harry resolutely replied as he tossed the duffel bag onto his bed before pulling out a change of clothes and laying them out for later. "But it was interesting."

" _What did he make you do?_ "

Harry climbed into his bed. There was just about time for a small nap before he'd have to leave for the Weasleys, and he desperately needed one. Stretching himself out on the bed, he answered Hedwig's question, "Hold up an island with wandless magic. Well…it was more like mildly slow down its fall…I think the man's gone senile in his old age."

" _I wouldn't be surprised,_ " Hedwig replied, " _Go to sleep if you're tired. I'll wake you up._ "

"Thanks, Hedwig," Harry said, before pulling the blanket over his head.

Idle thoughts floated through his head, some important, some not so, as he drifted his way towards sleep. One thought that floated to the forefront of his brain involved Slytherin's Memory Page…he still hadn't looked at it yet.

'Tomorrow,' he told himself, 'After I get back from the Weasleys…'

The next thought involved Sirius and how he could help keep the Ministry off of his tracks for even longer when he returned to Britain after he finished healing. The ideal solution, of course, would be to find Peter Pettigrew. But that was easier said than done. He had _no_ idea where Peter Pettigrew was, only that he was still alive. He could be literally anywhere on the planet, and the fact that he was a Rat Animagus made it even worse.

His mind wandered, and he encountered a wild idea that seemed so sinfully tempting.

He could kill a shit ton of zombies, take all the money he got from it, and flood the wizarding market with it. Since the galleons he was getting from the zombies was _literally_ from out of the world, the number of galleons in circulation would skyrocket, and the value of the Galleon would drop like a stone. The economic destabilization would wreak havoc for the Goblins and the Ministry. It'd be the _perfect_ distraction.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Crash the British Magical Economy Why? Does the reason even matter?**

 **Rewards,**

 **6,000 Exp**

 **Sirius will be freer than ever**

 **Failure,**

 **Goblin Revenge**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry stared widely at the window, before shaking his head and pushing the window to the side without pressing anything. Half-woozy and half-exhausted as he was, he wasn't equipped to make big decisions. He'd decide whether or not he'd accept the quest after he was a bit more lucid.

'Crashing the British magical economy…the game must be trying to tempt me…'

* * *

 **Well, here it is. Prologue to this installment of the story. Lots of arcs are in play. Future Harry, Dumbledore, Flamels, Filch and Diademort, Founders' stories, Luna's mother, Madam Yao and her mysterious correlation with IDs, the new school, Harry's attempts at not turning to the dark side, Hermione's arc(which you'll see in the next chapter) and so on. I certainly have no lack of stories to tell.**

 **Let me know what you thought.**


	42. Book-III:Learning and Teaching

Chapter 1:

Later that night, after being woken up by Hedwig an hour later than he was meant to wake up, Harry decided that crashing the economy and endangering the lives of hundreds of people in order to cause a distraction for Sirius and Lisa, who were both halfway across the world right now, wasn't that good of an idea.

Pulling up that Quest window, Harry gave it one last read.

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Crash the British Magical Economy. Why? Does the reason even matter?**

 **Rewards,**

 **6,000 Exp**

 **Sirius will be freer than ever**

 **Failure,**

 **Goblin Revenge**

 **YES/NO?**

The quest, while potentially fun, wasn't very practical. With a regretful sigh, he pressed NO.

Still, there was an upside to this. Now that he knew that he could do something like that, it was now a weapon in his arsenal in case…in case the Ministry was taken over by someone with less than benevolent intentions. Or in case they managed to piss him off enough to make him overlook the potential collateral damage that such a thing would cause.

Harry could almost bet that the second one was going to happen sooner or later.

Using the Glamour skill to make sure he looked half presentable; making a mental note to work on evolving that skill later; Harry quickly grabbed his duffel bag and with Hedwig on his shoulder, headed downstairs. He was already late, and there was no time to waste.

Saying his goodbyes to Perenelle at the dinner table, he chucked a plate of salad as hard as he could at Nicholas's face before making a quick escape out of the apartment and into the corridor that led down to the small room containing the building's public Floo fireplace.

" _What was that about?_ " Hedwig asked amusedly as they headed down the corridor.

"I told you, Hedwig," Harry said, "He lifted an island a hundred feet into the air and dumped it onto me. It was painful as all hell, and I want revenge."

" _So you decided to start with salad flinging._ "

"Have to start somewhere right?" Harry threw back, ignoring the snark in Hedwig's voice. _She_ wasn't the one who had just decided to reject a perfectly awesome method of world domination and was then forced to think up an impromptu revenge idea.

" _And why are we running like cowards?_ " Hedwig asked nonchalantly as she preened her feathers.

Harry stopped in his tracks and turned to stare at her, "He _lifted an island a hundred feet into the air and dumped it onto me_. That's why we are running."

Hedwig paused in her grooming, before turning to return Harry's flat stare, " _Think of better revenge ideas next time Harry. That was embarrassing._ "

"Will do," he agreed after a small pause, before stepping into the Floo room and handing a sickle to the doorman, who was staring in awe at Hedwig. Harry sighed. This sort of reaction was why he only used to take Hedwig out in public while she was in his expanded pocket.

And then Perenelle happened.

She had sat down with him while he was away from Hedwig and talked to him about how hiding Hedwig like this could make her feel like he was ashamed of her, also telling him about how it wasn't healthy for someone as young as her. And as much as anonymity in public was precious to Harry, it wasn't more precious to him than Hedwig.

Thus, the phoenix's spot during their outside visits had moved from the pocket onto Harry's shoulder.

Shaking off his discomfort at being stared at, Harry grabbed a handful of Floo powder and stepped up to the fire. Hedwig's voice echoed quietly in his mind at the exact moment, her tone grateful, " _Thank you for being considerate Harry._ "

Harry frowned, feeling slightly uncomfortable.

He was sure that he hadn't been that obvious with his efforts to make Hedwig more comfortable. How did she notice?

"You're smarter than you have any right to be," he muttered under his breath, making sure that the doorman wouldn't hear anything, "Has Perenelle been feeding you Wit Potions behind my back?"

" _Just accept the compliment and shut up._ "

And so Harry did.

Throwing the Floo powder into the fire, he stepped in, clearly saying the Floo address of his destination.

" _The Burrow!_ "

The fire blazed a vibrant green, sending him hurtling through the Floo Network with a whoosh. Flashing lights and darkness overtook his vision for a few moments before his feet suddenly found ground, and Harry clenched every muscle in his body to make sure that he wouldn't lose his balance as he rematerialized in the Weasley household and stepped out of the fireplace.

"Harry!" Mrs. Weasley hustled over to him immediately, hastily dusting off the ash and dust that had gotten on his shirt, "We thought you were going to apparate over with Phoenix travel! Why did you come through the Floo? You've gotten your sweater dirty."

Harry smiled sheepishly as he stood still and let Mrs. Weasley pull out her wand and run it over his shirt and clean up the splotches of dust and charcoal, "I figured you wouldn't want me apparating right into the middle of your living room."

"Well, I appreciate the courtesy, but you needn't have worried about that. You're welcome here any time Harry," Mr. Weasley said, standing up from his armchair with a smile. Harry nodded before he curiously noticed the small trunk that stood beside the chair.

"Are you going out somewhere?"

Mrs. Weasley stood back and looked over Harry's sweater one final time, satisfied with her handiwork, before answering his question, "My great-aunt Muriel has gone down with a bad case of rickety-flu, which is why Arthur has taken a tomorrow off work and we're heading over to check on her."

"The old girl would appreciate the company," Mr. Weasley added.

Mrs. Weasley's face contorted into a harsh frown, "She sure doesn't talk to us like she does."

"You know how Muriel is Molly. Her heart is in the right place," Mr. Weasley hurriedly assuaged, before turning to Harry, "We put out a bed and conjured up a bird-perch in Ron's room for you and Hedwig. The twins have gone over to their friend Lee Jordan's place for the night, and Percy is in charge while we are gone. Don't think twice about going to him if you have any problems. Everyone else has already gone to sleep, so you can say your hellos tomorrow morning."

Harry nodded before asking, "Has Hermione arrived?"

"She arrived earlier in the evening. She's bedding in Ginny's room," Mrs. Weasley replied before she suddenly caught sight of the wall clock and gave a huge start, "Oh dear! You'll find your way up to Ron's room won't you Harry? It's getting really late and we need to head out."

"I'll be fine Mrs. Weasley," Harry assured her.

And so the two adult Weasleys quickly grabbed the trunk and headed out of the house, closing the door behind them. A loud 'pop' of apparition let Harry know that they were gone.

" _They were late because of us weren't they?_ " Hedwig, who had been silent so far, piped up.

Another one of Hedwig's behaviors that Harry had noticed recently was that the list of people she actually talked to had managed to stay pretty self-contained. There were the Flamels, Fawkes, Harry, and the one time she had talked to Sirius. Even Dumbledore she had never directly addressed. Harry had speculated that it was some behavior unique to phoenixes. That _would_ explain why most people didn't know that Fawkes; or phoenixes in general; could talk.

"They were late because of _you_ ," Harry corrected, shaking off his thoughts as he headed down a narrow passageway towards the staircase, "You didn't wake me up in time."

Hedwig let out a mental huff, but didn't argue as they headed up the uneven staircase which wound its way, zigzagging up through the house. Stepping onto the fifth landing, they reached a door with peeling paint and a small plaque on it, saying RONALD'S ROOM. Harry quietly opened the door and stepped in, curiously taking in his surroundings. He had never really seen Ron's room before.

Nearly everything seemed to be a violent shade of orange; the poster-covered walls, the ceiling, the bedspread, as well as the hair of the boy who was sound asleep on top of the aforementioned bedspread. Ron's school spellbooks were stacked untidily in a corner, next to a pile of comics that all seemed to feature The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle. Ron's wand was lying on top of a fish tank full of frog spawn on the windowsill, next to a rat cage which seemed devoid of Scabbers, Ron's fat gray rat.

Ron's undying love for his favorite Quidditch team, the Chudley Cannons, seemed emblazoned in the very essence of the room.

A soft chuckle escaped Harry as he walked over to the empty camp bed that had been set up for him and put his duffel bag onto it, at the same time admiring the collection of posters the boy had. If the Chudley Cannons did actually become good, then he could make some serious gold by selling these.

It was a very big 'if' though. Chudley Cannons were solidly at the bottom of the Champion's League.

Hedwig took off from Harry's shoulder and glided over onto the wooden perch Mr. Weasley had conjured for her before closing her eyes and dozing off. Harry knew that Floo travel didn't really suit her, so he just let her be, instead choosing to shake of his shoes and climb into the blankets himself, ready to sleep off the night and wake up to a fun day tomorrow.

Sleep, however, refused to come to Harry.

Understandable; since he had _just_ woken up from a long nap; but very inconvenient considering he had over six hours left to spend in the night. So Harry decided to try and count his way to sleep, "One giant squid humping a Hogwarts tower, two giant squids humping a Hogwarts tower, three giant squids humping a tower…"

Even after 258 giant squids had humped the Hogwarts tower, Harry was nowhere near as close to sleep. Giving up on the number thing as well as on his sleep; Harry decided to open up his inventory and organize in order to pass the time.

The first slot in his inventory stopped him right on his tracks.

 **Founders Clue #2!**

 **Memory Page (2/4)**

 **A piece of paper capable of showing the user a pre-programmed memory once the paper's password is written on it. This particular memory page was created in 982 AD.**

 **Password: Speak to me Slytherin. Scourge of the Hogwarts Four**

His original plan had been to wait until he got back from the Weasleys to look into this memory page, but seeing as he had a few hours to pass now…Harry quickly checked Ron's status.

 **Ronald Weasley Lv - 7 (Status: Deep Sleep)**

 **HP: 400/400**

 **MP: 325/325**

After making sure that Ron was fully asleep, he cast a locking charm on the door using Riddle's wand. He then pulled out the Memory Page and a quill from his Inventory and wrote down the password neatly onto the Page.

 _Speak to me Slytherin. Scourge of the Hogwarts Four_

Just like it had the last time Harry had activated a memory page, the words seeped through the page and disappeared before the ink rose back to the surface and formed a circle about as wide as his hand. The circle glowed with a flickering silvery blue light. Slightly trembling, Harry placed a single finger on the circle. Instantly, the world around him lurched backward; the circle widened, and he was tossed head first through the opening in the paper into a whirl of color and shadow.

A fleeting, heart-stopping second later, he felt his feet hit solid ground. Slowly but surely, the blurred shapes around him came into focus.

With a lurch in his stomach, he realized that he was standing in the middle of the Chamber of Secrets.

Not the Chamber that he had walked into all mere weeks ago, but what looked like a grander, more livable version. Torches lit every corner of the place brilliantly and the dank moisture that had perfused every inch of the Chamber in Harry's time seemed to be completely absent here. Something else that was absent from the Chamber was Slytherin's humongous statue. The stone of that wall seemed to be still uncarved and plain, with the only thing on it being a door-shaped opening that Harry knew led to the Inner chamber.

The sudden click-clack of boots landing on the floor startled Harry, and he sprung around, only to see a green-robed man with a neat beard step into the Chamber; the snake engraved stone doors sliding shut behind him with a low thud.

His face was familiar to Harry. He had seen in back in his first year, during his brief stint in the Sorting Hat's consciousness. It was Salazar Slytherin.

With purposeful strides, he made his way through the Chamber, passing Harry as he headed towards the entrance to the Inner chamber. Harry hurriedly followed, bursting into a slight jog to keep up with the man, simultaneously keeping an eye out for anything out of the ordinary. They walked straight across the entire Chamber before stopping right in front of the entrance. Slytherin lifted his hand and lazily waved, muttering an unfamiliar incantation, " _Arcania Dissolus_ "

The stone around the doorway flashed vibrant purple for a single second. Protective wards, Harry recognized. As soon as the glow from the stone stopped entirely, Slytherin headed into the tunnel. Harry followed, now almost certain that whatever this memory was about was going to be inside the Inner Sanctum. The light from the chamber behind them soon disappeared around a bend, leaving them walking forward in the complete darkness.

It was a few moments and couple more bends later that the end of the tunnel appeared; lit by single torch; a solid wall with a snake carved on it.

" _Open_ " Slytherin hissed in Parseltongue, and the wall slid open.

This inner chamber must have been seriously modified in later years, because as it wasn't a small room that Harry had seen before. Instead, it resembled a humongous dome; a hemispherical stone arena capable of containing two full-grown Basilisks with ease! There were no seats, but on every single surface, including the curved walls and roof, were Runes and symbols that glowed gently, casting dim light across the entire arena. Harry could recognize a couple of them, but most of them looked foreign to him.

Engrossed by the runes as he was, Harry was startled when a rumbling sound started right beside him. Realizing that Slytherin had stepped into the arena and the entrance was slowly sliding shut, Harry quickly stepped in as well.

Slytherin pulled out a thick hard-binded journal and an eagle feather quill from his pocket before throwing them up into the air, where the quill sprung to life, darting to the journal; which had stopped mid-air and opened itself to an empty page; and poising itself with its nib on the paper, ready to write at a moment's command.

"Journal entry number 11. Title, the final experiment," Slytherin dictated, and the quill swiftly jotted down the words before neatly underlining them.

Harry stared at Slytherin, the journal, and the Dictaquill-like quill for a second, before looking back at the arena in comprehension. The runes…the journal…the dictation.

"This isn't an arena," he muttered to himself, "It's an experimentation chamber."

Slytherin's next line confirmed that. "In order to provide context should anyone in the future encounter this journal page in its entirety, I shall now dictate the circumstances that led to the conception of this experiment."

The quill flitted across the page, swiftly noting that down as Harry listened to him enraptured.

"For a great many years, the rivalry between the wand-wielding wizards of England and the magic weaving Celts had been bitter, but it was only in recent decades that those barbarians lashed out in an attempt to destroy our ways and customs. Our warriors were brave, but our numbers were too small, and soon they pushed the last of us back to the Hogwarts castle, killing all that stood in their way. As of three months ago, there were mere hundreds of us left alive. Our supplies were diminishing and our wards were being whittled down. Hogwarts was our last stand, and we were desperate."

Slytherin paused, giving the quill time to catch up to his dictation. Harry's mind was running as fast as it could, making connections from this to Ravenclaw's Memory page. The war with the Celts and how the remaining Anglo-Roman wizards had taken refuge at Hogwarts was something Ravenclaw had mentioned as well, though in nowhere near as much detail.

"But desperation is a great motivator," Slytherin continued, "My colleague Rowena of the Ravenclaws weaved mysterious magic, creating a servant race of elf-like creatures that changed the tide of the war. They used their unique magic to get past the enemy's lines and destroy them from the inside. Under Godric's leadership, our forces attacked, and within mere weeks we turned the tables, annihilating the entire Celtic armed force. It was the Celts who were desperate now…and desperation is a great motivator. The Celts brought upon this world something that they did not know the true power of. _Dementors,_ they called them. Of course, being uncontrollable as they were, the creatures turned on them and ended them all. Then, they turned on us…Our spells failed. Our elves were crippled. Our warriors turned into lifeless husks. The Celts were gone, but they left us with something much worse."

There was another pause, and the sound of the quill scraping across the parchment of the book struggling to keep up echoed around the giant room. Harry mentally reconsidered the power he thought house elves had. If they were powerful enough to turn the tides against an enemy that had almost entirely destroyed the wizarding race then maybe his initial intention of freeing them completely required some more thought than he had previously given it.

Slytherin gave a tired exhale, before continuing, "That brings us to this experiment. Eleven days ago, through much effort, I managed to capture a Dementor for experimentation. Since then, I have been trying to find a way to eliminate it.

Quill, end paragraph. Start new section titled _Experiment Procedure_. Underline it."

Harry stared as Slytherin gave his instructions and finally paused to give the dictation quill the time to catch up. This was…chilling.

Slytherin dipped his hand into a pocket and pulled out his wand, waving it in a gentle arc over their heads before slashing it down in front of them.

Harry jerked back as the stone around them flowed and twisted, rising up around them to form four walls…then a roof, capturing them both in a small rectangular stone box that the tip of Slytherin's head touched when he moved.

When the room finished forming, he tapped the wall in front of them, turning it transparent.

"Experiment Procedure has begun. I have entered the shielded observation area, and will now bring out the captured Dementor." Slytherin dictated, sending a chill down Harry's spine.

A section of the floor on the left side of the room dissolved, and a cage with a cloaked figure floating in it rose. The loud rattling breath and the shriveled skeletal hands more than confirmed for Harry that it was a Dementor. He was _really_ glad that he couldn't feel its effects through the memory.

"Prior experiments have shown two things," Slytherin continued, "One. After the Dementor was starved for three days, it lost its exclusive preference for humans and started attacking young magical animals for nourishment. Two. It has an instinctive dislike for fire, which signals a potential weakness that could allow it to be killed. Using these two observations, I have set up an experiment that will test if it can be killed with a powerful enough fire."

He paused, before pointing his wand at the other side of the room and giving it another twist.

This time, almost the entire half of the floor opened up, and a _humongous_ cage at least five times the size of the Dementor's cage rose. As the contents of the cage rose into view, Harry's mouth fell open.

Dragons.

An enormous, fully grown, vicious-looking dragon with silvery-blue skin restlessly prowled around a nest of rocks, on the top of which lay a smaller baby dragon with awkwardly small wings and stubby legs.

Harry had a bad feeling about this.

It didn't take long for the mother dragon to catch sight of the creature across the room, upon which she immediately darted onto the pile of rocks and coiled herself around her child, snapping and snarling in the direction of the Dementor, who had reached out through the bars of its cage, clawing hungrily in the direction of the dragons.

That was apparently something that Slytherin expected because a smile spread across his face and he started dictating to the Journal, "The Experiment is as follows. A mother dragon and her child will be used. The child will serve as the bait for the Dementor, drawing it towards itself and the mother dragon, who wields Dragon's fire, one of the strongest fires known. If everything goes smoothly, the mother dragon will breathe Dragon's fire at the Dementor to protect her child, and that will let us know if fire can destroy it or not."

He waved his hand, and the cages around the Dementor and the dragons disappeared. The Dementor instantly started to glide across the room towards the dragons, clearly fixated on the younger of the two.

The quiet of it all felt like the calm before the storm to Harry, and he wasn't wrong.

As soon as the Dementor was within reach, the mother loudly snarled before darting out and snapping her jaws at the Dementor, which smoothly rose up into the air, dodging the attack before making a dive for the baby. The mother immediately darted back and coiled her body tighter around the baby; who had started to whimper fearfully; and spread her wings over them both, shielding her child from the Dementor's skeletal hands.

The Dementor, however, remained unfazed. Grabbing one of her wings with each hand, it twisted.

An ear-shattering roar of pain filled Harry's ears, making him wince.

The mother, despite her pain, managed to instinctively swing with her tail forcefully, catching the Dementor across its midsection and sending it flying away. It came to a halt mid-air a dozen feet from the nest, easily righting itself mid-air. The dragon's blow hadn't daunted it at all.

However, instead of charging in again, it paused, considering the mother as if it was seeing her for the first time. The mother dragon painfully dragged herself and her broken wings around her nest to position herself between the Dementor and her child.

The entire world felt like it had stopped for a second.

At the exact same instant the Dementor dove, the mother opened her mouth wide and roared. A large jet stream of white-hot fire erupted out of her mouth and slammed into the Dementor, and for a moment the hot flames hid it from sight.

The tenseness in Harry's stomach uncoiled a bit. The Dragon's fire was surely going to burn the Dementor down, just as it had both times he had used it, and this stupid experiment would come to an end.

He was in for a shock.

When the fire cleared, the Dementor wasn't even singed. It dove right through the flames and grabbed the mother's neck with both hands.

SNAP!

The dragon fell to the floor, limp and dead.

Harry stared aghast at the Dementor as it pushed the dead body aside and glided its way over to the baby before picking it up.

Beside him, Slytherin sighed, defeated, before starting to dictate, "The experiment has failed. Dragon's Fire failed to have any visible negative effects on the Demen-"

Suddenly, he stopped.

Harry frowned before turning to look at the Founder, whose head had snapped towards the dead dragon. Harry instantly realized why as soon as he looked back.

The mother dragon's chest started to glow with a pulsating bright green light, which upon falling on the Dementor completely froze it.

Slowly, the light floated out of her and coalesced into a ball, which hovered at the place for a fleeting moment before instantly darting into the baby's body, who flashed bright green for a second before going back to normal.

The Dementor unfroze as soon as the light disappeared and continued lifting the child up to its mouth, presumably to perform the dreaded Kiss. The baby dragon whimpered in terror as it stared into the mouth of its oncoming doom before in a final instinctive attempt at survival, it let out a loud cry.

A small burst of flame, barely larger than a candle, was all that came out. And the Dementor's cloak caught fire.

Harry watched, just as astonished as Slytherin beside him, as the Dementor dropped the dragon and desperately tried to put out the fire that was spreading faster across it's cloak than any fire he had ever seen. Hoarse otherworldly screams of pain rang across the room as the Dementor flailed around desperately trying to put itself out for the next ten minutes as the fire finally burnt through its cloak; then its flaking skin; then its flesh; until all that was left was just a pile of ash.

It took few more minutes for Slytherin to regain his bearings and wave his wand, making the stone box that had enclosed them vanish. He then grabbed the journal and quill out of the air and threw them back into his pocket before darting towards the small pile of rocks upon which the baby dragon lay unconscious. Once beside it, he dropped down to his knees.

Harry made it to him just in time to hear what he was saying.

"Sleep little one," Slytherin said, and there was a sad smile on his face. "Sleep, and let me go put your mother to rest in the manner she deserves. Her sacrifice will forever be cherished by the Wizardkind."

The memory exploded into a blast of color and dissolved into silvery strands, just as a mighty fog swept in and filled everything around Harry.

Salazar Slytherin's voice echoed in his ears, "My lesson to you, seeker of our paths, is this. Seek not true power afar, for you will only find it within."

The fog dissolved in a whirl of color and darkness, and Harry felt himself falling. With a soft thump, he fell back onto the bed in Ron's room.

As he quickly regained his bearings and stuffed the paper back into his inventory before laying back down on his bed ill at ease with himself, thoughts about what he had just witnessed filtered through his mind.

It didn't take him long to use Gamer's Mind to make the necessary connections. So far in this Quest, he was being told the tale of a forgotten war. How the British were losing at first, and then the house-elves turned the tides, which then led to the Dementors being let loose into the world, which in turn led to…whatever happened in the memory.

He _really_ needed to find the remaining two Memory Pages before he could form a complete picture, but one thing was for sure, Harry thought as he pulled up the window for one of his most powerful skills.

He had a strong feeling that he had just witnessed exactly _why_ his Dragon's Breath could kill Dementors.

 **Dragon's Breath, Lv-2**

 **A concentrated breath of fire mimicking the magical properties of Dragon fire. Capable of burning through almost anything, and can be used for metal work too.**

 **5% level of control**

 **Cost - 950 MP**

A mother sacrificing herself to save her child, granting powerful protection to the child. That was _entirely_ too familiar to him after all.

* * *

Early next morning, loud thundering footsteps up the stairs woke Harry from his sleep. Just as he had pushed himself up to a sitting position and shared a bewildered stare with Ron, who had been woken up by the noise just like he was, Hermione came barging into the room, slamming the door open behind her.

"You two! Get yourself out of bed and downstairs!" she ordered, "We have letters from school."

That was enough to wake both of them up.

As Hermione left their room and went across the house loudly waking up anyone and everyone who was there, Harry and Ron quickly changed into fresh clothes.

"What'd you reckon the letter is about?" Ron asked in a muffled voice as he stuffed his head through the hole of his sweater.

"Don't know," Harry replied as he woke a half-disgruntled Hedwig up, "Could be about the end of the year exams. They were canceled once the school was suspended, so maybe they want us to take the exams in the Ministry or something."

"It could also be about which new school we go to couldn't it?" Ron asked hopefully. Harry knew that he wasn't the kind of guy who would be too keen on having to give exams.

"Could be," Harry agreed, "Has your Dad heard anything about which school we'll go to in the Ministry?"

"Dad?" Ron scoffed, "He knows about as many people in the Department of Education as our garden-gnomes do."

"Then I guess we'll find out what the letter is about downstairs."

"I'm not too keen on it though," Ron muttered, before clarifying further upon seeing Harry's curious look, "Don't want to be around Loony Lovegood. That girl is too many kinds of crazy at once."

"Luna Lovegood is _here_?" Harry asked, a feeling of dread creeping up his spine.

Ron frowned, "Didn't Mum and Dad tell you last night before leaving? When I convinced them to let you and Hermione come over for today, the twins and Ginny revolted. They went on a hunger strike, telling Dad that he was playing favorites. There was a whole episode, and at the end, they agreed to let the twins go over to their Lee Jordan's house and allow Lovegood to come over as well."

That feeling of dread that Harry was feeling creep up his spine decided to stop creeping and instead sped up into a sprightly walk, perhaps even a light run.

" _You look disturbed Harry,_ " Hedwig's voice echoed in his mind as she flapped over onto his shoulder.

Harry frowned before looking at Ron, who seemed to be obliviously putting on socks. He hadn't heard Hedwig's voice, which meant that Hedwig was keeping this conversation between them both.

"It's nothing," Harry muttered under his breath.

Soon, they finished putting on their clothes and headed downstairs, where Hermione, Ginny, Percy, and much to Harry's trepidation, Luna Lovegood were sitting around the kitchen table.

They headed over and found chairs for themselves, Hedwig taking off from Harry's shoulder and flying onto the top of the grandfather clock where she perched herself, proudly looking over the room like an overly self-important guardian angel.

Harry looked around the table.

Percy and Ginny were openly staring at Hedwig, Hermione was looking through a stack of letters that she held, Ron seemed to be fearfully leaning away from Luna, who was sitting next to him with a bright woozy smile aimed right at Harry who was sitting across the table from her.

"Hello Harry!" she said happily once their eyes met, raising her hand into the air and wildly waving at him, "You have a pretty bird."

"Hello Luna," Harry replied, relieved that Luna seemed to have stopped calling him 'Mr. Toadinger' and started referring to him by his real name, "Thank you."

"You're welcome," she said, before giving him a blatantly obvious wink and a thumbs up. Harry's relief flew down the drain.

Ginny, who seemed a lot less shy since the last time Harry had seen her, frowned before asking, "What was that about Luna?"

"Well, Ginny," Luna started magnanimously, "You see, Harry is actually an Umdingering Toadinger-"

"He's a _what_?" Hermione interrupted, looking up from the letters she was arranging, befuddled.

"I think we're getting off the topic here. We need to look at those letters," Harry hurriedly intervened before his secrets and sanity could follow his relief down the drain, looking at Percy as he silently urged him to take charge of the conversation.

Percy, thankfully, cottoned on pretty fast, "Right. Granger, do you have everyone's letters here? Even yours, Lovegood's and Potter's?"

Hermione nodded before passing the letters around the table to everyone, "These letters don't have addresses on them, just our names, so the owls probably ended up finding us instead of going to our homes."

Harry took his letter, before cracking open the Hogwarts wax seal and pulling out the parchment paper.

 _HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY_

 _Headmaster: Albus Dumbledore_

 _(Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorc., Chf. Warlock,_

 _Supreme Mugwump, International Confed. of Wizards)_

 _Dear Mr. Potter,_

 _We regret to inform you that Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry will remain closed until an unknown amount of time due to ongoing security and staff revisions. The end of the year exams for the term of 1992-1993 have been suspended, and all the students have been granted passing marks by default. Since our students' education is our first priority, you will be temporarily transferred to another school, where you will receive the same high quality of education that you have come to expect at Hogwarts._

 _That school is yet to be decided, and you will be notified by owl as soon as it is finalized. Enclosed is a brochure containing a list of the various schools of magic around the world for your information._

 _Yours sincerely,_

 _Minerva McGonagall_

 _Deputy Headmistress_

Harry looked over to peek at Hermione's letter, which seemed to be pretty much identical to his. Soon, everyone else finished reading their letters as well, it didn't take long to confirm that Ginny, Ron, Luna, Hermione as well as Harry had pretty much identical letters. Percy, however, looked like someone had taken the ground out from under his feet.

"Percy?" Ron asked, "What's wrong?"

Percy looked up from the letter at Ron, and then back at the letter, before shaking his head, "It's nothing. I need to go see if I can find some stuff on these schools in my books. You…you lot behave down here alright?"

He pushed back his chair, stood up, and headed up the staircase with a blank look on his face.

Ron stared after him with a frown, "What's wrong with him?"

"Ron you idiot," Ginny admonished as soon as Percy's footsteps were out of earshot, "You know how excited he was about becoming Head Boy next year. He's probably devastated."

"Oh," Ron wilted, "I didn't think. I thought he was still mad at me because Scabbers is missing."

Ginny looked ready to tear into Ron again, which was probably why Hermione quickly interrupted the conversation, "That's all well and good, but what Percy said is right. We should research the schools at first. Wherever we go, we might have to spend a lot of time there, so knowing about it makes sense."

Suddenly, a window popped up in front of Harry.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Find at least one previously unknown piece of information about each of the schools on that list only with the assistance from those in the Burrow.**

 **Rewards,**

 **2000 exp**

 **1 stat point**

 **Knowledge about Schools**

 **Failure,**

 **Loss of student reputation**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry pressed Yes.

The failure consequences weren't that bad, and even if he did fail the quest then he could just go ask Nicholas and Perenelle about the schools to learn more about them.

Luna, who seemed to have been fascinated by the grains of table's wood until now, decided to speak up again, "Should we start with the brochure that came in the letter then? We probably should, before the Nargles start stealing them and hiding them away."

"Er…" Harry stared blankly at her before saying, "Yeah…we probably should."

They dug into their envelopes and pulled out their brochures before opening them up.

 _WIZARDING SCHOOLS AROUND THE WORLD_

 ** _Beauxbatons Academy of Magic_** _is a prestigious school of magic located in France which accepts students from France, Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain._

 ** _Castelobruxo_** _is a school of magic rumoured to be as ancient as Hogwarts. Located in the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, it accepts students from all over South America._

 ** _Durmstrang Institute_** _is a wizarding school whose exact location is unknown, although many believe it is in Sweden or Norway. It accepts students mostly from northern Europe._

 ** _Ilvermorny School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_** _is a school of magic located in the United States of America which accepts students from all over North America._

 ** _Koldovstoretz_** _is a very mysterious school of magic located in Russia which only accepts students from its own country._

 ** _Mahoutokoro School of Magic_** _is an academy of magic located on a volcanic island in Japan which accepts students from all around Asia._

 ** _Uagadou School of Magic_** _is a school of magic located in the Mountains of the Moon in Uganda which accepts students from all over Africa._

"Well," Ginny muttered as she finished reading, "They weren't exactly being descriptive, were they? All they told us is where the schools are."

"It does make sense when you think about it," Harry said as he closed his own brochure and threw it onto the table. "They don't want us to think the other schools are better and just transfer away do they?"

"I guess it makes sense, but it does seem like a shady thing to do." Hermione said with a frown.

"So what do we do now?" Ron asked, trying to completely ignore Luna who was trying to balance the brochure on her head and somehow managing to fail every time.

Harry looked around. It was going to be hard to do it without the Flamels' help, but there was only one way to complete the quest.

"We pool our knowledge together. I know a fair bit about Beauxbatons, since my guardians are from France. I remember that we read a bit about Castelobruxo and Koldovstoretz from those adverts they were running in the newspapers a few months back."

"I think we still have those newspapers!" Ron chimed up, "Mum probably saved those somewhere, and I bet we could find them if we looked."

That seemed to start their brains rolling. Hermione perked up, before turning to Harry and saying, "Oh! I researched Ilvermorny before joining Hogwarts! My parents wanted to see what other English-speaking schools we had as options."

Harry nodded enthusiastically, "So we have only Mahoutokoro, Uagadou, and Durmstrang left."

"Durmstrang is famous for how secretive it is about where it is and its ways. I honestly don't think we could find much more if we tried," Ginny spoke up dejectedly.

"Oh don't be silly Ginny," Luna piped up in the middle of trying to balance the letter perfectly flat on her nose, surprising them all, "Daddy and I go to Sweden all the time to look for Crumple-horned Snorkacks. I don't know too much, but I've heard some stuff from the odd Blibbering Humdinger."

Wisely deciding to not question what any of those were, Harry said, "Then there's only Mahoutokoro and Uagadou left. We'll look for more on those later. For now we should pool whatever we know together."

"Why don't you three write down whatever you know while Ron and I go search for those newspapers?" Ginny, said, her voice gaining a slight stutter as she directly addressed Harry.

And so they all sprang into action.

Well…the four of them did. Luna just wandered over to the clock Hedwig was sitting on and started hopping up and down, waving her arms trying to make the Phoenix fall off.

Ginny dragged Ron upstairs to look for the newspapers while Hermione pulled out a notepad and a pen.

"Where were you keeping that?" Harry asked. Hermione's clothing didn't really have pockets in it.

"Don't ask questions you don't want to know the answers to Harry," Hermione simply said, pulling the cap off the pen and getting ready to write, "Now tell me what you know about the Beauxbatons."

And so they sat there for the next fifteen minutes, first Harry telling her everything he knew about Beauxbatons, including how the school placed a strong emphasis on etiquette and social graces, believing that it led to more responsible wizards with a stronger resistance to the temptations of the Dark Arts. Then Harry took up the notepad and Hermione tried to remember as much of the research she had done prior to her first year as possible. Amongst the most interesting things Harry noted down was that Ilvermorny had been founded by an Irish witch and a Muggle, which led Harry to believe that this school could be much friendlier to Muggleborns.

They even managed to eventually convince Luna to stop harassing the slightly constipated looking Hedwig and tell them what little she knew about Durmstrang. It wasn't much, and Harry was pretty sure one of the things she said was probably false, but it was something at least.

Ron came through soon after, finding the newspapers that had the advertisements on them, telling them more about Castelobruxo. Information about Koldovstoretz though, remained very vague.

The best find of the day, however, happened a full half an hour later, when Ginny came barreling down the stairs.

"I found it!" she declared, tossing what looked like a magazine onto the table before tiredly falling into a chair. Ron looked at her strangely before picking it up.

"This is one of Mum's potions magazines."

"Not _just_ a potions magazine," Ginny said with a tired smirk, "A potions magazine with an advert for the Wizarding Potions Championship!"

Then it clicked.

The Wizarding Potions Championship was an event that was held once every 7 years. Harry had only read of it once before in an old Potions book in the library. It was held between 4 schools. Hogwarts, Koldovstoretz, and most importantly the two schools that they needed information about; Mahoutokoro and Uagadou.

A grin spread across Harry's face, "Ginny! That is an amazing find!"

Ginny turned a bit red, before squeaking out a thank you. Apparently, she wasn't all that much over her crush after all.

The magazine had profiles on all three foreign schools and what their reputations were in the international community, which was pretty much all they needed.

They did, however, run into a problem.

The description for Uagadou was written in English and Swahili since they were both official languages of Uganda. Mahoutokoro's was also written in Japanese as well as English, so they could read that just fine too.

Koldovstoretz's description, however, was _entirely_ in Russian and only had a tiny line at the bottom in English.

 _The Headmaster of Koldovstoretz refused to allow Potions Weekly to publish a translated version of this description._

"What in the world?!" Ron exclaimed in frustration, "Why would they publish their descriptions in English magazines if they weren't going to publish it in English?!"

"Maybe to protect their secrecy," Hermione mused.

Ron wasn't having it, "But why would they even publish it here if they were so keen on secrecy?"

They had no answer for that. Harry frowned as he pulled the magazine over to himself and ran his eyes over the block of text written in Russian. It was a right shame that his AllSpeak skill didn't allow him to read languages.

Ping!

 **Area Sense: Someone is behind you!**

At the same instant, Luna, who Harry had last seen disappear upstairs, suddenly materialized behind him and leaned down to look at the magazine over his shoulder, startling Harry and nearly making him fall off his chair.

"Is that Russian? I can help with that," she asked dreamily.

Hermione, who had _really_ gotten into this little Project they had started, eagerly asked, "What does it say? Do you know?"

Luna nodded, rattling her radish earrings, one of which poked Harry in the eye painfully, "I do. Daddy taught me a bit when we were searching for Brazilian Crisslebristlers in Siberia."

"Why were you searching for _Brazilian_ Crisslebristlers in _Siberia_?"

Luna completely ignored Ron's pointed question as she picked up the magazine.

"Luna I don't think-"

"Let her help Ginny," Hermione interrupted, "If she can do it then it will really be helpful."

"But Hermione-"

"Ronald." Hermione frowned at Ron disapprovingly, "Don't be rude. Let her help."

Harry, as he gently his eye, decided that he had a strong feeling they were going to regret this.

Luna turned the magazine upside down and held it right next to her nose, before starting to read, "It says here, 'If at first, you don't succeed, lick a tree and tickle a dog and sniff an Umdingering Toadinger.'"

She then closed the magazine and proceeded to stuff her nose into Harry's hair before taking a big long sniff.

And then there was silence.

"Er…" Hermione was the first one who found her voice. She looked like she had finally grasped why everyone else at the table wasn't keen on letting Luna help. "Are you sure that is what it says Luna?"

"Absolutely," she said, nodding her head so vigorously that her hair shook as if it'd been caught up in a hurricane.

Caught up in a hurricane, coincidentally, was what the minds of the rest of the people in the rooms felt like.

Fifteen minutes later, they found a more reliable translator in the form of Percy, who seemed quite willing to help out once they mentioned they were trying to learn more about the other schools. Translating the entire thing word by word using a dictionary took a stupidly long time and provided them with a _very_ rough translation, but with them all huddled around Percy's desk and helping him, it wasn't too difficult.

As soon as they had finished writing the final line on the list, a window popped up in front of Harry.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Find at least one previously unknown piece of information about each of the schools on that list only with the assistance from those in the Burrow.**

 **Rewards,**

 **2000 exp**

 **1 stat point**

 **Knowledge about Schools**

Their list, now complete, read like this:

 ** _Beauxbatons_** _\- Good at Non-Verbal Magic. Teach etiquette and behavior with heavy emphasis. Take their OWL equivalent at 6th year instead of 5th like Hogwarts_

 ** _Ilvermorny_** _\- Was founded by a Witch and a Muggle. Is protected by elf-like creatures called Pukwudgies. The students are taught mysterious Native American magic unknown to the rest of the world_

 ** _Durmstrang_** _\- Famous for teaching Dark Arts freely. The position of headmaster is held by Igor Karkaroff, who is rumored to be a Death Eater. Known home of the yet to be discovered Garglesnarfling Badoozlers._

 ** _Castelobruxo_** _\- Students are good at Magizoology and Herbology. School is protected by Caipora, small furry spirits who're (according to the advert) good at their jobs. This school is just as old as Hogwarts_

 ** _Mahoutokoro_** _\- One of the strictest and most academically oriented schools in the world. Is openly opposed to teaching Dark Arts. Alongside the normal course, it also provides early basic education since wizards and witches are 7-year-olds_

 ** _Uagadou_** _\- Students are masters of Transfiguration, with many becoming Animagi by the time they graduate. Known to cast spells wandlessly and not use wands at all. Students are also known to score well in Astronomy._

 ** _Koldovstoretz_** _– Teaches Dark Arts, although only to older students. Students are known to be very good at Potions. Strangely, they're known to fly on actual uprooted trees instead of broomsticks in Quidditch._

"They do Quidditch with _trees_?!" was the first thing Ron exclaimed as soon as he finished reading the list.

"I can't believe this," Hermione muttered exasperatedly, "One of the schools could have a _Death Eater_ for a Headmaster, and the first thing that he talks about is Quidditch."

Harry had been a bit on the fence about that particular piece of information. On one hand, if they ended up being sent to Durmstrang and the Headmaster did turn out to be a Death Eater, he wasn't sure he'd be able to stay his hands and do nothing.

On the other hand, it was _Luna_ who had told them about it, so there was a question mark the size of the Giant Squid on whether or not it was true.

"I don't think Professor Dumbledore would send us to Durmstrang or Koldovstoretz, considering their stance on Dark Arts," Ginny said out loud, pulling Harry out of his thoughts, "He'll probably send us to an something easier to understand, so Beauxbatons or Ilvermorny seems pretty likely."

Harry shook his head, "He might not get a choice. It's all up to the Ministry and the ICW. Besides, this list is still very flimsy. We weren't able to find much."

"That is actually a very decent list," Percy disagreed, "Wizarding schools are really private about themselves, so I doubt you could have found bette-"

A sudden loud crack of apparition sounded across the house, immediately silencing all of them.

Percy frowned before closing the translator book and jumping off his chair, heading out of his room and down the stairs. The others followed, reaching the living room just in time to see Percy open the door to the very frazzled looking Mr. and Mrs. Weasley.

"Mum? Dad? What happened?" Percy worriedly asked, "Weren't you going to stay at Aunt Muriel's today?"

"No time to explain," Mr. Weasley said, placing his trunk near the umbrella stand before hurrying past them and rushing up the stairs two steps at a time.

"Just turn on the wireless dear. Your father and I need to head to the Ministry immediately," Mrs. Weasley said, patting Percy on the back before hastily following Mr. Weasley up the stairs.

Probably feeling just as confused as Harry was, Percy quickly headed over to the mantelpiece and turned on the Wireless.

With a crackle and a hiss, a rusty sounding voice filled the room.

" _-there has been an attack in South London in which unknown Dark Wizards have used rituals on a Muggle to grant him unnatural strength and released him into the streets, where he has been causing havoc and destruction for the last hour. All Ministry personnel under the Department of Magical Secrecy as well as any civilians experienced in Healing are to report to the Ministry as soon as possible! Everyone else is to stay indoors and raise their Muggle-Repelling Wards."_

There was a small pause, and the announcer's voice was trembling when he resumed.

" _The Statute of Secrecy is under serious threat. I repeat. The Statute of Secrecy is under serious threat._ "

* * *

Archibald Dundy had been the British representative in the Educational Office of ICW since eleven years, and all those years he had examined and approved International Teaching Licenses for dozens of people, granting them the qualifications to teach at any of the eleven ICW certified schools.

None of them had ever quite been like this one.

Archibald closed the applicant's file, looked to his left, and shared a look with Amare Kitumba, who was representative from Uganda and a very close friend. Amare, inspite of his naturally unflappable composure, seemed to be sporting a frown.

To his right sat Madam Yao, a bald-headed woman who looked mystifyingly ageless. She was a representative from South-East Asia, which had been a relatively recent addition to the ICW. The three of them were the final examiners; the Tribunal who were supposed to either approve or deny the Application for the International Teaching License that lay before them.

The three of them sat on one side of a large desk going through the applicant's file while on the other side of the desk sat the applicant himself, patiently waiting for their questions. He looked like he was in his late twenties, young for wanting to be a teacher, but he had approved younger.

He called himself Markus Black.

"Mr. Black," Amare broke the silence, his deep voice further amplifying his heavy accent, "You have passed our DADA Teacher's theory and practical tests with excellent marks, and your examiner writes in your file that he has never seen a _Patronus_ cast quite as smoothly before. That is a great compliment coming from someone as experienced in Wand Magic as Monsieur Ferrati."

Markus smiled pleasantly, "That was really kind of him."

Amare nodded before his brow furrowed and his tone turned harsh, "Indeed. Let me be perfectly honest Mr. Black. I find the lack of information in your file disturbing. You say you are from England, yet there is no proof of that. You have provided no documentation of your birth. You do not have OWL or NEWT certificates, and nor have you provided us with a concrete mailing address. And despite all of that, you want an International Teaching License in DADA? If your performance in our Aptitude and Character tests hadn't been excellent then I would have thrown this application out without a second thought."

Archibald nodded. He too had seen the lack of any proper documentation in the file, and it had stuck out as disturbing to him too.

"I wish I could furnish you with better documentation, Sir," Markus said as he looked at them regretfully, "But I do not have them. I have been an orphan ever since I was an infant, through my teenage years I was home-schooled, and I have been a nomad ever since I have turned an adult."

"So why this sudden interest in becoming a teacher? You are young, so surely you must want to travel some more." Madam Yao asked, rustling her yellow embroidered robes as she leaned forward in her chair, resting her arms on the table.

Archibald gave a slight start. This was the first time he had heard her speak, and for some reason, he had expected her to have a heavy accent. Her English in reality was pristine and her voice devoid of any accent whatsoever.

"I wanted to become a teacher to be able to make a positive difference in the future," Black started, "I believe it will be a fulfilling challenge: stimulating the next genera-"

Madam Yao's lips tightened before she sharply interrupted his answer, "I asked you a question, and I require an honest answer, not something you rehearsed twenty times beforehand."

Markus stared at her with wide eyes, shocked into silence.

Archibald was impressed. It was the first time Madam Yao had ever joined a Tribunal, and already she seemed to be tailor-suited for the job.

"I agree," Amare said after a moment.

Their applicant looked at each of them with wide eyes for a moment, before his shoulders slumped. With a sigh, he extended his hand towards them, palm downwards. Archibald frowned, before looking at it closely. It didn't take him long to see what the applicant was trying to show them.

A bright red scar stuck out brightly against the man's pale skin, almost as if the words of the scar had been carved over and over and over into the back of his hand.

 _I must not tell lies_

It took Archibald half a second to recognize it for what it was. His head snapped up to meet the applicant's eyes as soon as he did.

"That is the scar of a Blood Quill," he muttered, horror tinging his voice. Amare and Madam Yao shared a look. Archibald had no doubt that they knew what it was too.

Markus nodded, steel-faced as he pulled his hand back and tucked it under the table, "One of my teachers did that to me as well as my friends…as a form of punishment. I already knew she was a horrible person before she did it, but my friends…they forever lost their trust in teachers and those in authority. The reason I want to become a teacher is to make sure that no one like her ever gets close to a child again. They deserve better."

There was a small pause before Madam Yao nodded and turned to look at Archibald, "He has the qualifications as well as the motivation. I vote to grant him the License."

"Thank you," Markus quietly said.

In all his years of work, Archibald's gut had never served him wrong. Right now, his gut was telling him that this applicant wasn't lying, and that was enough for him.

"I too vote yes," he said, getting a grateful nod in return from the applicant.

They all looked at Amare, who was considering the man sitting in front of them gravely. A silent moment passed, and then he said, "You have purpose Markus Black…I approve of that. I vote to grant you the License as well. Congratulations."

"Thank you very much," Markus said earnestly, "You won't regret it."

With their decision made, they passed around the files, each putting their signatures wherever it was required. When the file made his way to Archibald, he noticed something interesting as he signed the third of the dotted lines he had to sign.

"It says here that you have a wand with Thestral tail hair and wood of Elderberry," Archibald said with a raised eyebrow, "You do know how the old saying about Elder wands goes don't you Mr. Black? ' _Wand of elder never prosper_ '."

Markus Black chuckled, "You know what? That probably explains a lot about my life."

Archibald smiled. The man had a sense of humor, which was always good to see in a teacher.

Through the corner of his eyes, he thought he saw that Madam Yao had suddenly frozen in her spot. When he turned to look at her however, she was completely normal and relaxed. Dismissing it as a figment of his imagination, Archibald turned back to his file.

* * *

As Hermione finished her dinner, wished her parents a good night and headed to bed, thoughts about what had happened throughout the day were slowly churning in the back of her mind. It had taken Mr. and Mrs. Weasley a few hours to return from the Ministry, after which they had apologized to her before rushing her back home.

Harry had stayed though. They had mentioned something about Harry's home being only a Floo away while her home not being so easily accessible.

Hermione didn't mind.

Meeting her friends was something she definitely appreciated, and talking with Ginny and advising her on how not to panic in front of Harry had definitely been nice as well, but she couldn't afford to slack in her goals.

The last year of her life had been terrifying, but it had also been very educational.

It had taught her that the wizarding world was _dangerous._ It had taught her that all the knowledge that she had collected through reading books and through school allowed her to do very little to protect herself and her friends against someone who was determined to wish them harm.

With that realization had come fear.

Fear of losing her friends. Fear of her family, who didn't fully know how horrible the world of magic could be, being hurt. Fear for her own life.

And that fear, in turn, gave rise to determination. She needed to be better… _stronger_ …

Closing the door of her room and climbing into her sheets, Hermione patiently waited until the sounds of her parents talking in bed completely stopped and the silence of the night took its place.

Once it was all quiet, she slid out of her bed and tiptoed over to her school trunk and opened it, dipping her hands into the folds of her school robes before pulling out a thin, plain, dark covered book. Closing the trunk behind her, she quietly made her way back to her bed and climbed into it before resting the book on her pillow and opening it.

On the first page was the title of the book, followed by the name of the author.

 _Curtain of Darkness: A Theoretical Thesis on Dark Arts_

 _By - Ralzinys el Sathar_

With dull eyes filled with too little sleep and too much of everything else, she read on.

* * *

 **What school do you think Harry should go to? I'm leaning towards Beauxbatons, since Terry is already there and I could integrate Fleur and maybe even Gabrielle into the story. Maybe even delve a bit further into Flamels' backstories.**

 **Let me know what you think about the chapter too.**

 _ **P.S. Did a double update because I'm too impatient to wait to post after writing. Might take a bit longer on the next chapter though...lots of plotty and actiony stuff to write from scratch.**_


	43. Book-III:Born Without Magic

Chapter 2:

After Hermione had left, Mrs. Weasley had ordered them all back to their rooms, not willing to let them keep listening to the wireless news on the radio and the ominous reports of people being trapped and getting hurt. After a not inconsiderable amount of protesting, Ron had stomped off back to his room with Harry, Luna, and Ginny in tow.

Together, they had shuffled into the tiny bright orange room.

"It's not fair!" Ron declared as Harry made himself comfortable on the chair by Ron's desk and the two girls took a seat on the bed.

"Sit down Ron. You're turning red," Ginny said dryly, "I'm sure mum is just worried about us."

Ron glared at her for a moment before jumping onto his desk and sitting down on it cross-legged with a humph, "If some Muggle attacks the house we won't be much safer here in the room than down there, will we?"

An amused trill filled the room.

Ron jumped and almost toppled off the table, before turning around to look at the bird stand that stood near the corner of the room from upon which Hedwig was looking at him amusedly.

"She's very right, Ronald," Luna said nodding sagely, making her earrings bounce, "We are much safer up here together under her guardianship than on our own spread around the house."

Ron and Ginny stared at her confusedly before getting even more surprised when Harry hesitantly nodded to agree with her. "Hedwig was pointing out to you that she's here to get us out of here very fast if necessary."

" _I've been sharpening my talons too. If anyone comes for the torchheads and the loopy one, I'll stab 'em,_ " Hedwig's voice added helpfully in Harry's mind.

Ginny noticed Harry staring fixedly at Hedwig and in an unusually perceptive manner, asked, "What did she say to you? She was talking to you right?"

Before Harry could reply to her, Ron scoffed, "Don't be absurd Ginny. Hedwig's pretty smart, but she can't talk."

"She does with me. In my head, using mind arts," Harry corrected, deciding to let go of that trivial little secret.

Ron stared at him before shaking his head. "…Of course she does…why am I even surprised? Does Professor Dumbledore's one talk too?"

Harry nodded, "He's pretty ancient and he talks to pretty much anyone he wants. Hedwig's pretty young and shy, so she only talks to me right now though."

" _I am NOT shy. I'm just…private._ "

"Apologies."

"So?" Ginny asked, "What did she say?"

"Hmm?" Harry asked, before suddenly remembering Ginny's initial question, "Oh, she was saying if anyone tries to hurt you all, she'll stab them."

Ron burst out laughing, before turning to look at the magical bird and instantly sobering up when he caught sight of her eyeing her glinting talons. Luna on the other hand, jumped up from the bed and hopped over to the bird stand before picking up the bird and grabbing her in a tight bear hug. The accompanying indignant squawk set Harry off in a fit of wild laughter.

Ginny smiled at that, before turning to Harry, "Can you…um…tell her that I say thanks?"

" _This one is not my least favorite of the seven redheads,_ " Hedwig declared after Luna had put her back down, looking up from preening her ruffled feathers to chirp at the redheaded girl.

Harry grinned, "She understood you just fine. She also says thanks."

Ginny turned red.

They spent some time talking about how Mrs. Weasley had returned back to the Ministry to help out since she was trained in the healing arts and if the Aurors would be able to contain the Muggle or not.

Ron wasn't worried at all. "We get these warnings all the time! Well…maybe not rampaging ritual powered Muggles, but giant coffeepots, dragons on the loose, crups, flying vehicles, and so on. Dad covers half of those. You should see him and the Obliviators at work. He'll have it sorted in no time at all."

Harry wasn't so sure about it.

Soon afterward, upon realizing that during their little knowledge-finding-quest and subsequent wild panic after the radio message the morning sun had climbed upwards in the sky and turned a lot harsher, Ron kicked the two girls out of his room and jumped onto his bed with the intent of taking the longest of naps. Within minutes, he was snoring away on the bed.

Ginny had left shaking her head before heading up to her own room with the loony blond in tow, and the only one left awake and in a distinctly uneasy mood in Ron Weasley's room was Harry.

That message from the radio played itself over and over again in his head.

 _"-there has been an attack in South London in which unknown Dark Wizards have used rituals on a Muggle to grant him unnatural strength and released him into the streets, where he has been causing havoc and destruction for the last hour-The Statute of Secrecy is under serious threat."_

Surely that couldn't be as normal as Ron was making it out to be. Why would the Aurors let the rampage go on for an _hour_ if it was such a regular occurrence? He had read book upon book on the dangers of dark rituals and the mind-melting power and insanity that they bred in people. Surely the Wireless wouldn't be making a big deal about this if it wasn't really dangerous. People could be getting hurt or dying!

'Calm down,' he thought to himself, 'there is no point in procrastinating. The Aurors probably have everything in control already.'

Deciding that he couldn't sleep, he figured that perhaps it was best to try out some of those mental exercises that Perenelle had recommended to him. He needed to calm his mind.

So Harry sat down cross-legged on Ron's desk and closed his eyes, focusing on feeling the mana around him, letting his own magic seep out of his body and mingle with the air around him. It was a rich environment, the Burrow, potent with years upon years of magic being cast. Not like Hogwarts, but a lot more…homely.

It felt nice.

Slowly, and almost unconsciously, he drifted into a sort of haze, letting all the sound and smells around him pass through his mind freely.

A soft ping sounded in his ears, and it felt like his senses opened up.

Every sound felt louder. Every smell felt distinct. He was sure that if he opened his eyes, he would be able to see a lot further than he could have normally. It felt like Area Sense, but there was no danger around him. He had caused it to trigger on his own and was taking in all the knowledge and sensory power that the skill granted to him, even if it only lasted for a few moments.

A grainy muffled voice reached his ears. The static in between the words was enough for him to realize it was the wireless that Percy was listening to down in the living room. With a bit of intrigue, he listened in closer.

" _-situation spiraled wildly out of control when the Muggle managed to make his way into the Diagon Alley. With the Aurors' spells and magical restraints bouncing right off the Muggle and the immense brute strength of the Muggle making it virtually impossible for any Auror to restrain him, there was no other choice than to evacuate Diagon Alley. Most people have been evacuated but many still remain in the Alley cut off from help by the rampaging Muggle wildly charging around in the Alley and destroying everything in its path…hold on…we have just received confirmation that Auror Emmeline Vance has been severely injured in an attempt to rescue a civilian-_ "

Harry's eyes snapped open and the sensory haze broke. In front of him hovered a level up window and a quest alert.

 **Due to skillful use, a skill has leveled up!**

 **Area Sense, Lv-6 (30%)**

 **Allows the user to get a sense of the area around him/her. A more permanent version of the Supersensory Charm. The higher the level the more information is provided.**

 **Effective until 55 feet.**

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Save the people in Diagon Alley and defeat the Muggle!**

 **Rewards,**

 **15000 exp**

 **10 skill points**

 **Public reputation**

 **Failure,**

 **Death. Of course.**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry pressed yes and waved the windows away.

"Alright. That's it. I'm going," he muttered to himself before jumping to his feet.

He put on his shoes before heading over to Hedwig's perch and whispering to her, "Can you stay here and make sure that everyone her gets out of here safely in case something bad happens?"

" _I will. But Harry, what are you going to do?_ "

"What I do best. Meddle in things that are none of my business. Stay safe girl," he replied, pulling out his Invisibility Cloak and Wolf jacket out of his inventory and putting on the jacket and then the Cloak. Knowing that Ron would stay out of it for at least a few more hours, Harry opened the bedroom door and snuck out quietly, before turning around to close the door behind him.

Safely latching the door, he turned around, only to jump out of his skin when he came nose to nose with Luna Lovegood.

"Are you going to the Diagon Alley?" she asked, as if she had decided to ignore the fact that Harry was wearing a Cloak of Invisibility.

Harry took a breath and stepped back, before asking in disbelief, "You can see me?"

"Of course I can see you silly. Why wouldn't I?" she asked, "I heard what the man on the Wireless said. The Blibbering Humdingers have been buzzing with bad news too. Something bad is happening Mr. Toadinger. Are you going to help those people like you helped me?"

Harry stared at her, before nodding, "I'm going to stop whatever is trying to hurt those people."

Luna nodded, before taking off the bottlecap necklace she was wearing and putting it in Harry's chest pocket. It wasn't one of his magical pockets, so the caps all bunched up together and it looked like he had stuffed a rock the size of his fist down his pocket.

"For good luck," she said with a grave look, "Trust me."

Harry nodded hesitantly, before stepping around her and heading downstairs. As he stepped down the stairs quietly and tiptoed to the living room, he caught sight of Percy sitting at the couch with his arms crossed, his eyes tensely flicking from the now silent wireless to the front door again and again. His wand was clutched in his hand.

He was waiting, Harry realized, and guarding. His respect for Percy grew a little bit.

"Sorry Percy," Harry muttered, before pulling out Riddle's wand and pointing it at him and muttering, " _Stupefy!_ "

Red light lit up the entire room for a second and Percy slumped over in the sofa, out cold. He would wake up a couple of hours later on his own, probably thinking that he had dozed off…or so Harry told himself to push away the guilt.

Opening the door, closing it securely behind him and casting a locking charm on it for good measure, he ran out the front garden past the garden gnomes stealing the potatoes and the pumpkin patches. He didn't stop running until he was far out of the range of the Weasley home wards.

With barely a thought, he turned on the spot and disappeared into nothingness with a silent whoosh.

When he reappeared, he found himself in one of the nooks in one of Diagon's many little side alleys, hidden behind a large pile of boxes.

It was the place he had met Lockhart the previous year.

Taking a moment to get his bearings, he realized that he was hidden near the Flourish and Blotts bookshop, which put him closer to Gringotts than the Leaky Cauldron. The loud noises of destruction and people screaming and shouting spells weren't the best of signs of the safety of the people in the Alley.

Keeping the Cloak on, he snuck along the wall to the mouth of the side alley to take a look at what was going on and get an idea of what he was going to do.

He wasn't expecting what he saw.

The alley was in complete disarray. Ollivander's wand shop and all the shops surrounding it were in complete ruins. The front of the shop had caved in and the old wandmaker was lying in the pile of rubble unmoving.

Harry quickly cast an Observe at the old man.

 **Garrick Ollivander Lv-88 (Status: Unconscious, Concussion)**

 **HP: 8000/21000**

 **MP: 25/9000**

He breathed a sigh of relief. At least he was alive. Breathing a sigh of relief, he turned his head to look at the attacker.

In his head, Harry had pictured a giant burly crazed man with angry red eyes rampaging around the Alley, but this wasn't it. The lithe, almost fighter-like form of a young black haired boy; looking less than 15 years of age; darted across the alley, grabbing chairs and tables and brooms and heavy obsidian cauldrons and throwing them with such force at the group of Aurors standing at the mouth of the Alley that were barely managing to protect themselves, trying to cast shields around themselves and the civilians cowering near the mouth of the Alley. Spells of all colors and types washed over the boy with no effect and the Aurors were clearly outmatched by an enemy that their magic had no action on.

Gamer's Mind immediately noted that there were many people hidden in some of the shops all around the Alley. It appeared that many people who did not know how to Apparate or couldn't Side-Along and didn't want to leave their family behind hadn't been rescued yet.

Finally, propped up on the remains of a wall near the Ollivander's was a familiar wounded Auror, bleeding heavily out of her side. She didn't seem to have her wand-Harry doubted she'd have the mental strength to cast any spells even if she did.

Emmeline Vance.

Ms. Roemmele. His old chemistry teacher. The woman who had guarded him for years, even when he never knew about her. She was right there, and Harry didn't need an Observe to realize that she was dying.

'Alright. Time to move Harry,' he thought to himself.

Gamer's Mind immediately set out his priorities. He needed to get to Vance first. Some of the Aurors were wounded, but their cuts and bruises were not lethal. He'd have to get to her first, heal her, and then get her out of the Alley.

His eyes darted across the line of Aurors in search of a familiar face.

Nymphadora Tonks was at the back of the group, helping heal and patch up the wounded Aurors, every two seconds she seemed to be casting panicked glances in Vance's direction.

He'd get Vance to her. She was probably the only one that wouldn't shoot him on sight.

He'd get the civilians out next. He could Side-Along a couple at a time, but his Side-Along Apparition wasn't as silent as his normal Apparition at all. It made a noise. That wouldn't do at all. He couldn't run them across the place without risk of exposure either.

He glanced in the direction of Gringotts. The gates had been closed, doors had been sealed and the guards had all retreated. Typical of goblins to not help in any wizarding matters.

He was running out of options fast.

Then it hit him.

The ID.

Right. He could get the people out with the ID and then just get them out of the Alley as fast as he could. Possibly to some medical help.

Then he'd take care of the Muggle.

With the plan of action set in his head, Harry clutched his Cloak tighter around him and activated Unicorn Boost, dashing out of his hiding spot and through the Alley to the other side, ducking to dodge a flying chair thrown in the direction of Madam Malkin's Robes shop before shimmying along the wall to the spot near Ollivander's where Vance was propped up.

He was wading through the dust and the rubble and making his way closer to his old teacher when suddenly her head snapped up in his direction. "Who's there?" she asked in a faint shivering voice.

Harry frowned. He didn't know if the dust had made him visible or the crumbling of the rubble had given him away, but it wouldn't do to have her panic and attract unwarranted attention. Left with no other option, he crouched down to activate Sneak and swiftly removed his cloak and slid it into his inventory in a swift motion, hoping that his familiar wolf jacket and modulated voice would be enough to assuage her

" **It's me. Don't make a sound,** " he said in his disguised voice and thankfully, recognition sparked in her eyes and she nodded.

Harry stepped over a pile of rubble, crouched down beside her, and checked her Status to see what problems she had.

 **Emmeline Vance, Order of the Phoenix (Status: Concussion, Bruises, Compound Fractures of the Humerus, Ruptured Pancreas, Bleeding -10% hp per minute)**

 **Lv-22**

 **HP-100/1600**

 **MP-20/2100**

She was in really bad shape, but nothing that his Healing Touch couldn't handle.

Harry pulled up the Healing Touch skill and focused a large amount of mana in his hand, making it glow slightly from the inside. Vance's eyes widened as the glow grew more and more potent, before flinching slightly when Harry placed it on her bleeding wound.

A ripple of pure white light traveled across her entire body, making her glow for a second before every single one of her wounds faded away as if they were never there.

Her breathing eased and her eyes widened. "How-"

" **Not now,** " Harry replied, " **What can you tell me about that kid there? Anything at all will help.** "

"He…" Vance looked over Harry's shoulder at the rampaging boy who was slowly advancing on the Aurors, "The kid is thirteen. Magic doesn't affect him, restraints don't hold him, and he is strong enough to hold up two grown men with one arm. The older Aurors reckon that he might be a squib or the descendant of a squib that was left with Muggles. We think he had his magic unlocked by some dark wizard and then sent on a rampage. We don't know much else."

Harry nodded. He already had an idea about how he could subdue him.

" **Are there reinforcements on the way?** "

Vance nodded, "Senior Aurors were away on an international mission. They should be getting back soon. The teachers from Hogwarts should be arriving soon as well. Listen. There are people in the shops. The Menagerie…most of them are hiding in Madam Malkins' and the Menagerie. We can't apparate because we don't want to risk pulling attention. We are practically defenseless."

Harry turned to look at the Menagerie. The animals in there were causing a racket like nothing else.

He swiftly made a few adjustments to his plan.

" **Right. If you get you over to the Menagerie, can you get people out of there? The animals should be able to hide the sound of you apparating.** "

"I can," Vance said, getting up to her feet and testing her fingers. Healing Touch had put her back in peak form, "You'll handle Madam Malkin's then?"

Harry nodded. Vance turned to look at the barricade of Aurors near the Alley entrance, before using her hands to mime a few signs in that direction. Harry turned around to look at what she was doing.

None of the Aurors; occupied as they were; had noticed him heal Vance. None, except one. Nymphadora Tonks was staring at them wide-eyed, her eyes darting from him and her partner before she turned on the spot and ran back into the Leaky Cauldron.

"Get the people to the Leaky Cauldron. Tonks will make sure no one accidentally shoots you there," Vance said, and getting a nod back, she turned and darted across the Alley towards the Menagerie.

Before any of the Aurors could see her and realize that someone had healed her, Harry visualized the changing room in Madam Malkin's shop in his head and turned on the spot, disappearing from sight.

He reappeared inside said changing room and stepped out.

"AH-" a shrill voice started to scream, but almost instantly cut off. Harry took stock of the room.

There were almost a dozen people scattered around the place, most of them children. Madam Malkin was sitting on a chair, holding her hand tightly on the mouth of a child who sat on her lap. They were all looking at him with wide and fearful eyes.

" **I'm here to get you out. Form a ring and grab each other's hands,** " Harry commanded. There was little time for idling and he needed to get people out as fast as he could. Much to his displeasure, no one moved. " **NOW!** " he commanded again, holding out his hand.

Madam Malkin shakily protested, "You can't apparate us all. You'll splinch yourself and everyone else too."

" **We're not apparating. Now quick!** "

They started to move, Madam Malkin first, and then the rest, forming a ring of people grabbing each other's hands.

" **Everyone here? Good,** " Harry said upon receiving a nod, before muttering 'ID Create' under his breath.

Some of the children shrieked as the world around them turned red and the noises of destruction in the Alley outside stopped.

Harry sighed, glad that it had worked. He had been worried that he wouldn't be able to bring so many people into the ID at once.

Together they all shuffled out of the shop and down the alley, his passengers too scared and confused to ask what was happening. They all got into the bar one by one and formed a ring once again at Harry's command, before he muttered under his breath, " **ID Escape.** "

The red around them shattered and the real Leaky Cauldron took its place.

Harry found himself facing a dozen wand-points at once.

He looked around and took stock of the situation. The Aurors had turned the pub into an impromptu infirmary, where wounded Aurors lay on the floor being treated while dozens of worried family members paced around the edges of the room, awaiting the return of their loved ones. Tom the barman rushed around the place, helping out wherever he could.

"Relax everyone!" Tonks, who was standing near the bar, yelled immediately. The wands dropped, but the looks of suspicion coming from the Aurors very much stayed.

"You got them out huh?" Tonks said, walking over to him as the children he had just rescued rushed to their waiting parents with cries of joy, "Em too...Thank you. I owe you another one."

A pop sounded behind them as Vance apparated in with the final two people from the Menagerie.

"Is everyone here?" she asked upon seeing Harry and Tonks together.

" **Yes,** " Harry replied, causing half a dozen people around him to flinch due to his voice, " **Have the reinforcements arrived?** "

Tonks shook her head, "It'll take them some time."

" **The Alley will be leveled by then at this rate. Why is he doing this? Has he made any demands?** "

"Only angry calls to bring more Aurors in so that he can kill more wizards."

" **Fine then…I'm going in. Hopefully, I can tire him out enough to make it easy to capture him. Can you make the Aurors out front control their spellfire a little? Maybe ask them to try not to hit me?** "

Vance and Tonks gave each other a worried glance before they both went over to the fireplace to talk to a purple robed Auror giving out orders. After what looked like a fair bit of arguing, all three came back over to Harry.

"I don't know who you are, but these two trust you and I trust them. If you can do anything at all to help, then do what you need to," a dark-skinned purple robed Auror with a Senior Auror badge attached to his chest; Kinglsey Shacklebolt by the window floating above him; said, "I'll talk to the men. It's not as if our spells are doing any good. I'll get them to give you some covering fire."

With that, he stepped out of the pub and into the Alley, presumably to give orders to the Aurors outside. Harry was about to step outside behind him, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

It was Madam Malkin. "Thank you," she said, "for saving us."

Harry looked around. Whereas there were still a great many cautious eyes scattered across the room, there were a far greater number of grateful ones.

Harry gave her a nod and stepped outside. The small group of the dozen Aurors defending the Leaky Cauldron parted to let him through and Harry walked forth, ignoring the suspicious murmurs. He quickly cast an Observe on his new opponent.

 **Jarvis Thompson (Status: Magical Immunity from most spells and bindings)**

 **(Relationship Meter - 0%)**

 **Lv-7**

 **HP-2500/2500**

 **Race-Squib**

 **Str-76**

 **Vit-52**

 **Dex-48**

 **Int-12**

 **Wis-3**

 **Luc-5**

 **Jarvis Thompson is a squib, a non-magical born of two magical parents who abandoned him. Jarvis grew up in an orphanage and goes to school at St. Middlesbury. He really likes the girl who sits two rows behind him in class and hopes to grow up to be a scientist one day. He has recently discovered that he was abandoned because he wasn't magical and wants to get retribution.**

 **He hates wizards and wants to kill them all.**

Harry suspected he would've felt a twinge of sorrow and compassion for the boy had he not just thrown a cast iron bench through his favorite ice cream shop in the whole wide world. His HP was high for his level…unnaturally so…way higher than Harry. Furthermore, his strength, vitality, and dexterity were well above his own stats.

This was trouble waiting to happen.

Magic was ineffective on this guy, which meant that he only had his physical abilities to use. Gandiva, Precognition, Iron Fist, and his own enhanced strength, hopefully, protected by the Physical Endurance skill. Gandiva was out of the question, since if Dumbledore recognized it then maybe there were others out there that could, so he had to make do with the rest.

Opening up his own stat windows, he decided to pump some stat points into his physical stats. There were times for saving up stat points, but this was not one of them. After buffing up his stats, they looked something like this.

 **STR-49**

 **VIT-40(+4)=44**

 **DEX-44(+4)=48**

 **INT-44**

 **WIS-48**

 **LUC-27**

 **POINTS-2**

He could make do with having a lower strength. He still had Iron Fist to hit some critical hits, but his biggest strength was his speed. He needed to be at least a bit faster than his opponent, otherwise, he wouldn't be able to land chain hits and critical hits. He also needed to be able to take hits, hence his vitality increase.

He'd had magical fights before, but this was the first time he was going to be in a _brawl_.

With a deep breath, he stepped out of the Auror shielded barricade and out into the Alley. His opponent sized him up, his eyes twinkling brightly against his dirty white skin.

" **Jarvis,** " Harry started, attempting to talk the boy down first, " **You don't have to do this. No one has been lethally hurt yet. You can still give yourself up and you'll be back at your school like nothing ever happened.** "

"Your little memory erasers?" the boy snarled angrily, "They said you people would offer that. Shame that your magic doesn't work on me. No one is getting into my head, which means that you'll probably throw me into that prison of yours. Azkaban."

Harry frowned. This was no ordinary squib who had been experimented on unwillingly. He had been talking to someone who had been poisoning his mind…

" **Who's 'they'? Who have you been talking to?** "

"Who are you supposed to be?" Jarvis asked, ignoring Harry's question, "Some sort of negotiator? If you come any closer I will kill you. Walk away. My fight today is with the Aurors."

Harry stepped closer, " **You've hurt normal wizards too Jarvis. I can't let you continue doing that.** "

Jarvis looked at him with a curiously amused look before he picked up a piece of rubble the size of Harry's head which was lying near his feet and pulled back, chucking it at Harry with all of his might.

Harry didn't move, instead just raising his fist and pointing it towards the incoming projectile.

The piece of rubble slammed into his hand and exploded into a cloud of dust.

Harry smiled. It was a rather well-timed Iron Fist, even for him.

"Finally!" Jarvis said, his eyes wide with glee, "Someone interesting!" Almost so fast that Harry didn't even realize it, he sprung into a run, dashing towards him with a raised fist aimed for his head.

Ping!

 **Area Sense: Incoming Punch!**

Harry immediately sidestepped the punch before slamming an Iron Fist into his opponent's gut, sending him stumbling backward. His new strength was boosting his Iron Fist by quite a bit. Activating Unicorn Boost, he dashed behind Jarvis and drove a kick into his spine, knocking him down to the ground. When he was going for another kick though, Jarvis took the moment's opportunity and swiftly turned around, grabbing Harry's foot and pulling with all his might.

Harry slammed into the ground face first and before he could even get his bearings back, Jarvis had jumped up to his feet and slammed his foot into Harry's throat before twisting and landing a full 76 Strength punch right into his heart.

Harry would later realize that had it not been for the mysteriously indestructible bottlecap necklace Luna had given him, that punch would have probably caved his heart in. For now, though, he was in too much pain to care.

His head had snapped backward from the force of the kick and had it not been for the increased vitality, it might have snapped straight off.

Left heaving and coughing, Harry immediately dropped into an ID, performed a quick Heal job on himself and dropped back into the real world behind just where Jarvis had been standing. The boy was inspecting the spot Harry had been lying at, but Harry had reappeared loudly onto a pile of rubble which lost him the surprise advantage.

Suddenly, Harry's hair stood on its end and he tilted his head sideways

Ping!

 **Precognition active!**

Jarvis turned on the spot and drove a fist straight at Harry's head, or rather where it had been a mere second ago. Harry looked at the skill window wondrously, before dragging it to a spot near the periphery of his vision.

He wanted that particular skill very much active during this fight.

The next punch came at his chest, and Harry twisted on the spot and slammed the heel of his palm onto the forearm of his adversary, directing the punch away from himself.

Jarvis stumbled. Harry grinned.

With Gamer's Mind and Precognition, he was learning…adapting…

He couldn't fight this high a strength directly, but he could use it against Jarvis, who seemed to be a rather inexperienced fighter. Redirecting the force and causing him to lose balance would lead to openings in his guard that he could easily exploit. Using the momentum of his twist, he turned a full 360 degrees on the spot and drove a full power Iron Fist to the side of Jarvis's head.

 **Critical strike! Iron Fist- 200 x 700% times more = 1400 Attack!**

"Argh!" Jarvis yelled and stumbled sideways, swaying on the spot. Harry didn't pause. He kept attacking, dodging under punches and sidestepping wild flailing kicks and slamming Iron Fist after Iron Fist into the boy's gut. He took his fair share of hits too, but his Unicorn Boost, Vitality and Physical Endurance helped him hold up.

Slowly but surely, Jarvis's hits slowed, and Harry started pushing him further and further into a corner.

Hopefully, he'd be able to knock the boy unconscious and get him captured.

But a cornered man was a dangerous man, and Jarvis was feeling very cornered. Giving up on his desperate melee assaults on Harry, he jumped, his 76 strength propelling him a solid two dozen feet into the air.

He was trying to escape!

Harry wasn't going to let him go. Concentrating his mana onto the ground below him, he exploded it with a large force and jumped upwards with all his might, riding the blast of concussive force and sending himself and a barrage of shrapnel-like pieces of stone and rock towards Jarvis.

Much to Harry's surprise, the shrapnel hit Jarvis before he did, and unlike the magical ropes and restraints that the Aurors had thrown at him, the rocks didn't dissolve mid-air, instead peppering his whole body with cuts and bruises.

Harry grabbed Jarvis's midsection mid-air and pulled him downwards, turning around to position him above the boy as they hurtled towards the ground and hit it with force enough to crack the stone pathway. Harry immediately got to his feet and jumped back out of Jarvis's reach in case he decided to throw some hail-Mary punches from underneath him. Surely his spine couldn't have survived such an impact…

Not even that fall had managed to stop the dark-haired squib.

Slowly but surely, shaking with pain, he got up to his feet. Harry's eyes ran over all the cuts and bruises that the rocks and shrapnel had left him with.

It was then that Harry realized the chink in Jarvis's armor.

With a twist of his hands, four immensely thick tendrils of earth rose up around Jarvis's legs and hands and bound him to the floor. Turning around, Harry yelled at the Aurors, " **TRANSFIGURATION! HE CAN'T BE SPELLED, BUT HIS SURROUNDINGS CAN! USE TRANSFIGURATION! BIND HIM USING TRANSFIGURATION!** "

It was enough for the Aurors. Under Kingsley's command and with Harry holding him in place, dozens of benches and desks and umbrellas and book twisted and turned and slammed themselves onto the boy. The more he shook off and broke, the more appeared to climb over him, slowly but surely restricting his movement and burying him alive under the command of a dozen trained Aurors until all that remained visible of him was his face.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Save the people in Diagon Alley and defeat the Muggle!**

 **Rewards,**

 **15000 exp**

 **10 skill points**

 **Public reputation**

With his opponent defeated and restrained, Harry slumped to the floor feeling so tired that his arms felt like they were made of lead. Aurors swarmed the makeshift tomb that Jarvis was entombed in, presumably to take him into custody.

"Need a hand?" Tonks walked up to him, offering him a hand. Harry took it and the Auror pulled him up with ease.

" **What will they do to him? Afterward?** " he asked, getting onto his feet and dusting himself off.

"The damage outside in the Muggle world has already been handled. Obliviators have been putting in a lot of work. Plus, Kingsley says that the Unspeakables are on their way to reverse the ritual on the kid. They'll probably use Veritaserum on him, get some information, and then put him back home. It'll be like nothing ever happened"

Somehow, Harry doubted that.

" **He wasn't the one behind this. Someone else has been telling him about the Wizarding World. Poisoning his mind. Giving him powers** "

"Well…" Tonks said, "Whoever it was, they just threatened the Statute of Secrecy. They'll have an Auror squad on their case by tomorrow."

Harry looked around.

There was a lot of rebuilding to do, but he could come down as Harry Potter and help out. There was no need for him to stay here any longer like this.

" **I think you can take it from here. I'll take my leave.** "

"Wait," Tonks exclaimed, "What's your name? Who are you?"

Harry simply chuckled and disappeared into an ID.

"No harm in asking," muttered Tonks before a grin spread across her face. Her sly little trick had worked. She had been gauging the man's weight when she had offered him her hand and she had just learned something very interesting.

He was light.

Incredibly so. Almost like a child. Someone out of Hogwarts or some other school perhaps. She had to give herself some leeway on the weight by assuming it possibly could have been lighter than she had imagined. Perhaps a sixth or seventh year, she thought. The heavy wandless and wordless magic didn't make any sense otherwise.

'It looks like we have a vigilante prodigy on our hands,' she thought to herself as she walked back into the Leaky Cauldron, wishing a quick good morning to the legendary Auror Mad-Eye Moody who had just arrived on the scene and was talking in quiet tones with Kingsley Shacklebolt.

He didn't wish her back.

"Did you see who he was? His face?" Shacklebolt asked.

"No," Moody gruffly admitted, "It's obvious that he is young, but that jacket of his…it was enchanted with the sacrifice of a life. Dark stuff. My eye couldn't see through it."

"So do you think we have a killer on our hand? A dark wizard? We can't assume that. The man just saved a lot of people. Maybe it was an heirloom?"

Moody gave a huff and turned to look at the carnage of the fight that had taken place mere moments ago. "What we have on our hands is an incredibly powerful wizard who knows exactly how to use the power he has. That's the most dangerous kind of wizard out there."

* * *

As far as politicians went, Albus Dumbledore considered himself to be fairly agreeable and social. He knew most of the world's leaders and had regular correspondence with them. However, he had only known Madam Yao, Ambassador of the Nepalese Government to the ICW, very briefly and passingly as an acquaintance of Nicholas's. Prior to the matter of providing asylum to Sirius Black and Lisa Turpin, he had never even spoken to her.

That was the reason behind the immense amount of surprise he was feeling as he read through the letter in his hand.

 _Professor Dumbledore,_

 _I hope that this letter finds you well._

 _Your former students have both settled in very well here in Nepal. The young one's mother was extremely pleased to be reunited with her daughter and has wished for me to pass on her gratitude to you. Her healing progress goes slow but sure. The elder one appears to be quite popular with our female trainees and seems to be taking to the healing like a charm. I have no doubt that the next time I write to you I will have nothing but good news about them._

 _However, the reason I write to you today is not just to inform you about my patients, but to invite you to my abode today. I must insist that you join me for tea and a chat this evening. The Floo address has been attached. We have a matter of utmost importance to discuss._

 _Regards,_

 _Madam Yao_

It was a relief for him to know that the two former students he had left in her care were in good hands. Albus did not know what matters she had to discuss with him, but he did know one thing. When an Ancient like her called, you answered. Yao was almost double the age of the other pair of ancients he knew; the Flamels; and wielded magic that Dumbledore had never been able to comprehend. He did not want to upset someone like that.

He looked up at the clock in his Wizengamot office.

Almost four.

There wasn't much time left if he was going to make it in time for the evening in Nepal. Time zones were such a tricky thing.

Quickly finishing up the rest of his paperwork relating to the Muggle attack in the Diagon that morning, he headed over to his fireplace, threw some Floo powder into it, and stepped in, speaking aloud the Floo address that had come attached to the letter.

 _Kangchenjunga_

The place he stepped out of could have been ripped straight out of a painting. He was in the only room of a simple little house with stone walls colored in bright red. In it was a small shrine to Buddha, the fireplace, a small cot, and a pair of doors, one of which opened up out to the open and the other to a large balcony. Clearly, Madam Yao was not one to enjoy the world's pleasures, preferring to live with the bare necessities.

Albus slowly stepped out of the balcony, taking in the sight before him with child-like wonder.

A sea of clouds lay before him and dozens of mountain peaks peeked from below, the morning sun glinting brightly off the fresh snow that covered their peaks. Gentle snowfall floated on the soft breeze that was running through the peaks and the air was incredibly fresh and light.

 _Kangchenjunga_

He should have realized. It was the name of the third highest mountain in the world, located in Nepal, famous for its ties to Hinduism and Buddhism. He was standing on its peak.

"I am glad you are enjoying the view, Albus," said a voice from his right.

It was Madam Yao, dressed in bright yellow robes, sipping on a cup of tea. Feeling it appropriate, Albus gave her a small bow.

"Sit. I have some news for you."

Albus sat, before looking at her with questioning eyes. The temperature was pleasantly cool, no doubt due to some heating magic, and the tea pleasantly tasted faintly of turmeric and garlic.

"Have there been any issues at the ICW?" he asked worriedly. Nepal's integration into the ICW was a compensation that he had been providing the Madam with in exchange for her help with Sirius and Lisa.

"None at all Albus, you have kept up your end of the bargain magnificently. Nepal's integration into the ICW as a separate entity is going well and I have no doubt that my country will benefit massively from this," she said, "However, as you are well aware, I have been around the ICW lately as a member of the instructor selection Tribunal. Yesterday, I encountered upon a…peculiar occurrence with one of the candidates"

Dumbledore looked at her curiously. "What would that be?"

"That wand of yours," she said pointedly, "I assume you know the reason it is special?"

Albus almost wanted to ask her how she knew of it before he restrained himself. The Ancients were known for knowing things that were beyond them and it was best to not insult them. Deciding not to question it, he nodded, "It is the Elder Wand, the Deathstick, the one that slays all. It is rumored to have been crafted by Death itself."

Madam Yao smiled mysteriously as if she wanted to make a correction in Albus's tale but was withholding herself, before saying, "Indeed…Yesterday, I was a part of the Tribunal to evaluate the application of one Markus Black. Orphan. No record of his birth and education. No address. He came in, scored impressively in the Defence field and filed an application for a teaching license."

"That does seem unusual…" Albus muttered, "But why come to me with it?"

"His wand was of a rather interesting composition. The wood of elderberry and hair from the tail of a Thestral. I assume that is familiar to you."

Albus stared at her with wide eyes before swiftly pulling out his wand from up his sleeve and checking the enchantments upon it. It was still very much his own wand. It was also still very much the Elder Wand. Frowning, he said, "I don't understand. Are you sure about it?"

"I am," she said, "It wielded just as much power as yours does."

This was troubling news. There had always been people who had attempted to recreate the Hallows, but if someone had actually succeeded…Dumbledore thought about it for a second before gravely saying, "I was aware that the wandmaker Gregorovitch had in the past attempted to create copies of the wand, but I wasn't aware that there had been any functional copies made. This Markus Black…perhaps he is from one of the Black family's German lines of ancestry…I will investigate this to the best of my abilities Madam. My gratitude for bringing this to my attention."

"Think nothing of it," she waved his gratitude away, before asking, "How is the boy doing? I so rarely come across children born with the gift of using our kind of magic instinctively."

"He has a good heart, young Harry," said Albus before chuckling as he was reminded of the report on his desk, "He helped prevent a very large attack in Britain today. Risked his life to protect people, as he so often does. I have no doubt he tried his best to hide his identity, but the description of his abilities given by the people he rescued was a dead giveaway for me."

"Hmm," Madam Yao mused, "Perhaps I should ask Nicholas to introduce him to me sometime."

Albus nodded, but in his mind, many different theories whirled around. He didn't know what to make of this Markus Black, but for the better or the worse, there was a second Deathstick out there, and where the Deathstick goes, death always follows.

* * *

In the cold, desolate forest road roughly 30 kilometers away from the Albanian border, an old man slowly hobbled towards the border check-post.

The Thestral that he had commandeered from the Forbidden Forest was a resolute beast. It had lasted through the days of grueling travel across the North Sea, flying him through Germany, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia. But it was in Montenegro that his journey finally stumbled upon its first great hurdle.

Food.

Not for himself, he had stolen enough of it from the Hogwarts kitchen, but for the massive beast that carried him. The beast couldn't hunt due to having been brought up in captivity, and he had run out of the money he had managed to scavenge from murdering a few passing muggles.

He could no longer provide both for himself and for his beast.

And so he had taken her as far as she could, finally landing near a spot roughly 80 kilometers away from the Albanian border, ended the beast's suffering with a kitchen knife, skinned it to create a blanket and cut it up into edible pieces for nourishment along the journey he'd be making on foot.

He had walked for a week, spending most of his time cursing his younger Horcrux for having saddled him with such a useless squib's body. It had taken barely a day after his first possession for what was left of the squib's mind to melt away and die and now all of his diadem's magic was focused on keeping this pathetic body together.

He couldn't even apparate!

If he hadn't heard of his Prime soul piece's 'death', he would've declared this to be the worst point in their entire collective life.

A honk and a loud screech of tires pulled him out of his thoughts. He frowned in confusion, realizing that a large lorry was screeching to a halt beside him. Curious as to what this was about, he walked up and looked into the drivers' window.

It was a mustached man with a cap and a thick coat on. He was smoking a cigarette.

"You heading to the border?" the man asked as soon as he came into sight, "Do you need a ride?"

The man spoke Serbian, one of the languages he did speak. Eagerly, he molded Argus Filch's face into the best smile that he could and replied, "Yes please."

Finally, some good luck was coming his way!

The man gladly helped him into the back of his lorry and shut the door behind him. Glad to be away from the cold, he sunk to the floor and immediately drifted asleep. Tired as he was, he did not notice the dozens of cages nor the half-conscious people slumped in them. He did not realize that he had just climbed into the back of the lorry belonging to a degenerate human trafficker that made his living by picking up stragglers hoping to cross the borders and selling them on the Albanian black market, and he did not realize that for once in his life, he was desperately and completely out of control of his situation.

Blissfully unaware of the pickle he had found himself in, Lord Voldemort slept on.

* * *

 **What skill do you think should Harry get when he reaches 50 in Str, Int, and Wis? If you have suggestions, please do let me know. I could always use the inspiration.**

 **Lots of plotlines are being set up in this chapter. Next couple of chapters will be in a similar vein too.** **Let me know what you think about the chapter (ESPECIALLY THE FIGHT! I spent 3 hours writing that fight).**


	44. Book-III:Secrets Laid Bare

Chapter 3:

"What in the world were you _thinking_ Harry?!"

Harry flinched subconsciously, before trying to mask it as a rebellious shrug. It didn't fool Nicholas, who immediately stopped pacing and sat down on the sofa beside Perenelle. Harry didn't dare look into her eyes. He was too afraid of what he would see there.

Instead, he chose to stare at the newspaper that lay on the coffee table before him. It was the day after the attack on Diagon, and the headline was typical of The Daily Prophet. Melodramatic and blown out of proportion.

 _THE MYSTERIOUS HOOD PREVENTS DIAGON MASSACRE_

 _By Rita Skeeter_

The article's contents were…disturbing.

They had noticed and deduced a lot of things. Wandless magic, his unique method of transportation, his ability at hand-to-hand fighting, his strength, his speed. His jacket had hidden him physically, but he had given away a lot more than he had intended to. He had underestimated the intellect and observational skills of the wizarding people. Just because he was smart didn't mean everyone else was dumb, and in his own personal drive for being the savior and not letting more people die, he had made that very critical and stupid assumption.

Nicholas was right. He certainly could've handled the situation better.

"Do you really think so highly of yourself Harry?" Nicholas asked in a much lower voice, drawing Harry out of his thoughts, "You think the Aurors couldn't have figured it out that Transfiguration would be able to stop the Muggle-"

"Squib," Harry interrupted, and Nicholas frowned.

"No Harry. This is where you listen for once. Muggle or squib doesn't matter right now. The people there were just the first responders Harry. They might not have figured it out, but the senior Aurors and teachers from Hogwarts who would have arrived there minutes afterward would have. The squib would have been downed soon enough. He didn't have a chance."

"It was taking too much time," Harry protested, "Half an hour is a long time to dispatch help. The people there were helpless."

"The senior Aurors would've needed to be pulled from their current assignments and the Hogwarts teachers were all at their respective homes. It would've taken time to reach them all, but they would have arrived. The trapped would have been rescued, the injured would have been healed. You have seen magical medicine at work Harry. People recover from injuries in days."

"Emmeline Vance wouldn't have. She was dying."

It was Perenelle who replied to that, "Then you should have healed her and gotten out of there. Instead, you carried a dozen people through your _very_ unique mode of transportation and then punched the squib into submission. A _fistfight_ Harry? Really?"

"It felt…like the right thing to do at the time," Harry replied sheepishly before sobering up, "But I understand. I was caught off guard at the moment and made it up as it went along. I wasn't thinking of you two back then. I didn't realize what this kind of attention would do for you…how it could risk revealing you if it revealed me. I'm sorry for that."

Nicholas stared him in the eyes before he nodded.

"I'm glad you realize that, Harry. I respect you enough to let you carry the responsibility of your own life. I trust you enough to let you carry mine. But my wife…what you did yesterday put hers at risk. That I cannot abide by. Do you realize that?"

"I do now. I promise I'll be careful."

Nicholas nodded before his expression turned fearful as he looked at the half-amused half-angry look on Perenelle's face.

"I don't know whether to slap you for being chauvinistic or kiss you for being sweet," she said.

"I suggest slapping," Harry piped up. Nicholas shot him a dirty look.

"There will be time for that later," Perenelle replied, not taking her eyes off her husband as her smile turning predatory with unsaid implications.

Harry grinned amusedly as Nicholas's expression did a full 180, before he remembered the real reason why he was sitting here in the first place.

"I presume you have questions for me?" he asked gravely, interrupting his guardians' teasing.

Ever since he had gained them, Harry had kept a lot of his powers very close to his chest. The Flamels knew a few of the big ones, but he hadn't fully confided in anyone except Hedwig. But now, all of a sudden, most of his secret powers were outed to the entire wizarding world. He knew his guardians justifiably wouldn't be very pleased with him. Neither would the old Professor.

Frankly, he was surprised Dumbledore hadn't popped out of the fireplace and started interrogating him already.

Ping!

 **Quest Alert!**

 **It's time. Tell your guardians the truth. The complete truth.**

 **Rewards,**

 **Peace of Mind**

 **Failure,**

 **Loss of trust from Flamels**

 **Gain of self-hatred**

 **YES/NO?**

Harry didn't look at the failures. He didn't care. It didn't matter. Not anymore. He had given telling his guardians everything a fair bit of thought throughout his time at Hogwarts the previous year, and while the circumstances weren't as ideal as he had thought they would be, his decision still held.

He pressed Yes.

"We do," Perenelle replied gravely, "The things you did at the Alley…you were fast…strong. A lot of things simply do not add up Harry. We had always assumed that you were hiding something from us, but once you revealed that you were capable of wandless magic and walking through the dimensions, we thought that was it. But it wasn't, was it? You have a bigger secret. You've revealed parts of it to us. Never the full thing though."

"I'm sorry," Harry said, hoping that they would understand, "At first, I didn't know if I could trust you. Then afterward…"

"Then what Harry?" Nicholas asked, leaning ahead.

"I…" Harry couldn't put it into words…the reason why kept hiding everything from them. Was it hatred he feared? Was it their disappointment in that he wasn't _really_ a prodigy? Only someone who had lucked out with a mysterious ability. He didn't know. He didn't want to know.

Instead, he shook his head, "It doesn't matter. It was a mistake. What matters that it's time you know everything."

And so he told them everything.

He told them of how he woke up one day with his whole life turned into a Game. He told them of his initial distrust, and he told them how he had started playing it without even realizing it. He told them of his distrust and his panic and his initial theories on how it all worked. Of his life at school and how it had changed everything about the magic.

He hesitated when he got to the darker parts of his story, but he simply snapped on Gamer's Mind and kept pushing through.

This was important. No more secrets.

So, with much difficulty, he told them about his first great regret, killing Wright, the werewolf. He told about how he had let anger take over while saving Tonks. About the time he had almost killed Lisa. About all the times he had lost control.

He told them about the terrifying image that the Mirror of Erised had shown him.

His guardians said nothing, but instead of the judging looks in their eyes like he had expected, there was pity and compassion. Somehow, it made Harry feel even worse. Halfway through, Perenelle and come over and sat down beside him, holding his hand as he talked about the difficult parts.

"My poor boy," Perenelle said as she enveloped Harry in a hug as his story drew to a close. With some surprise, Harry noted that some tears had escaped his eyes despite the hard grip that his Gamer's Mind had on his emotions.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **It's time. Tell your guardians the truth. The complete truth.**

 **Rewards,**

 **Peace of Mind.**

It felt appropriate. If he had received any other rewards, it would have cheapened his reasons behind revealing his secrets to the Flamel.

"So…a game huh? You are saying that this Game gives you the power you have?" Nicholas muttered, leaning back into his seat pensively once Harry had pulled himself back together.

Harry frowned, "In a way, I suppose. I have long since theorized that all of the Game's powers and skills are based on real magic. Observe is Scrying, Remomancy is elemental manipulation, Calligraphic powers are Ancient Runic spells, and so on forth. I don't think that the Game _gave_ me those powers. It told me how to use them and then simply…gamed them…for the lack of a better word. Quantified my skills and attributes and gave a number to them. It had an effect of almost instinctively making me strive to be better at it."

"I'm sure the Quests helped too," Nicholas commented, "This Game didn't give you magic. It just gave you the knowledge and made your growth _extremely_ efficient."

Harry nodded gravely, "It did. I suspect that the stat points I gain by doing them are simply a small portion of my magical resources that I can allot to my physical and intellectual attributes. How they affect stuff like wisdom and intellect I don't know, but they do, making me better at those attributes. With each level up I grow stronger, faster, smarter…even a bit luckier."

"You don't seem to be pleased with that," Nicholas pointed out, catching the worried look on his ward's face.

"Power corrupts Nicholas. Absolute power corrupts absolutely."

"Is this about that vision in the Mirror of Erised?" Perenelle asked, "You mustn't put so much stock in it, Harry. Surely you know that the Mirror doesn't show the future, nor does it know any bounds of reality."

"I know," Harry replied, his mind almost instantly pulling the image of death and blood that the Mirror had shown him to the front of his mind.

"Then stop thinking about it, Harry. It is not going to happen. Even if it does, there are people who will protect them and bring you back to the light."

" _But it's not the thought of it happening that scares you, does it Harry?_ " Hedwig, who had been silently sitting atop the back of his sofa, asked.

A stone set in Harry's throat. Hedwig had pretty much hit the nail on the head. Swallowing to clear his throat, he nodded blankly.

 _"It scares you that the one thing that you would desire the most as the Gamer is to be the best in the world. No matter what the cost. No matter who the cost. You're not worried that you might kill everyone you love, Harry. You're worried that you want to."_

Nicholas stared at Hedwig for a few moments before turning to Harry. "So is that the reason why you keep trying to risk your life playing hero, Harry? Is it an attempt to repent for sins that you haven't even committed yet?"

"I've committed plenty sins, Nicholas," Harry snapped back, "You know about all of them now."

"Not in my eyes you haven't. You have killed for self-defense and when you thought you had no choice otherwise. That is not wrong."

Harry looked into Nicholas's eyes, almost wanting to be angry at him for not seeing him as he did himself. He was objectively a killer. He deserved to be hated…instead he...then he shook his head.

"It doesn't matter. There has to be a reason why this happened to me. Some rhyme or reason to why I was the one who was gifted with these extraordinary powers. If not to protect people then why else? If I have the abilities that I do and still I let people get hurt, then I am nothing but the monster the Mirror showed me."

Perenelle looked like she was about to vehemently disagree, but the pointed look from Nicholas was enough to stop her from pressing Harry further on the topic.

"This…Founder's quest that you are working on," Nicholas asked, changing the topic, "Tell me more about it.

Harry frowned, "It's…complicated. I think it has been about uncovering a lot of stuff on this mysterious war between Anglo Roman wizards and Celtic magic weavers. Ravenclaw created the House-elves to turn the tide of the war, then the Celts retaliated by using Dementors; accidentally killing themselves; then Slytherin figured out how to make use of Dragon Fire to destroy them…there are still two more chapters to the story that I haven't found yet. I don't know where it is leading, but the Founders called it true knowledge. Whatever that means."

Perenelle and Nicholas looked at each other uneasily, before she said, "This sounds…ominous Harry. I wish I could say I know more about this, Harry, but we have rarely ventured into the lore of Hogwarts. That is Albus's forte. Nicholas and I were educated in Beauxbatons. And even if we had been in Hogwarts, the Founders were well before our time. This is the first we're hearing of this…test."

"But I will send out word through some secure channels. See if I can't uncover some books or other things for you," Nicholas added, "And don't worry. Albus won't know about any of this unless you want him to."

Harry smiled gratefully.

* * *

The brick wall hollowed out in front of him as Harry stepped into the Diagon Alley.

Nicholas and Pernelle had gone on for hours asking him questions and asking him to elaborate on his abilities and how he got them. They were rather impressed with his story of fighting a Dementor and using it to get Tom Riddle's soul out of Lisa's body as well as the real account of what had happened in the Chamber. There was a lot to talk about, but Harry was happy to sit there and talk through all of it.

It felt good to get all of it off his chest.

Once they had finished, however, Harry had grabbed lunch and quickly headed down the apartment and in the direction of Diagon Alley. Harry had come to know that the rebuilding efforts had started as soon as early that morning when Mr. Fortesque had popped in for breakfast and to let them know that he was heading out to the Alley to start the repair work on his shop.

The poor man had been downright devastated when Sir Knucklehead Fudducker McSpazzatron had disappeared out of the blue, and it had taken much convincing and Pernelle's warm chicken soup to bring the man back to his former cheery self.

Then a rampaging squib had tossed a cast iron bench through his shop.

Besides, there was fear to consider.

The Wizarding Public was no doubt terrified following the events of the previous day. He had heard from Mr. Fortescue that due to the panic caused by the nationwide warning broadcasts, there had been very few people in or around the Alley and that most people were still afraid of coming out of their homes.

Nicholas agreed with Harry's opinion that seeing Harry Potter out and about helping with the rebuilding would at the very least help a little bit with the public morale.

So when the quest had appeared to him, Harry had pressed yes.

 **Quest Alert!**

 **Help in the rebuilding of at least 2 shops in Diagon Alley. Rewards dependent upon the shops.**

 **Rewards,**

 **15000 exp**

 **?**

 **?**

 **Failure,**

 **Decrease of reputation in Wizarding World**

 **YES/NO?**

And that was how Harry found himself stepping into the Diagon Alley, both wands up his sleeve and ready to help with the rebuilding efforts. He had no doubt that Mr. Fortesque could handle his own repairs, but there were others he could help out, like the much more damaged Ollivanders' Wand shop.

Harry's mind was brought back to the present by the sight that greeted him when the wall in front of him fully disappeared.

It was…curious.

The Alley-especially the spot where Jarvis had been captured the previous day-was swarming with wizards and witches dressed in either scarlet red robes, which told Harry that they were from the DMLE, or cloaks that were so pitch black that Harry couldn't look at them for long without his eyes glazing over.

The people in the black cloaks…their faces were hidden…hidden in a surprisingly familiar manner. It was the same kind of cognitive haze effect that he knew his Werewolf Jacket projected.

He hadn't known that the effect was reproducible, but apparently, it was.

"Observe," Harry commanded, looking at one of the black robed people. They seemed to be working unobstructed by the Aurors, which meant that they had to have been sent from the Ministry.

 **Observe Unsuccessful!**

 **Error: Target has active Scrying Magic Protection.**

'Unspeakable,' Harry realized immediately. There was only one kind of Ministry Department that valued its secrets so much that it would place Spy magic protection on its own employees. With a start, Harry realized that he had never seen an Unspeakable out in public in full uniform before. The ones he had seen in the trial of Lisa had been only wearing normal cloaks and badges.

The wizard whom he had tried to observe paused whatever he was doing and immediately turned around, his head turning from side to side as if looking for something.

Harry, having no intention of being caught, immediately stepped into the Alley and started quietly weaving through the crowd towards Florean Fortesque's Ice Cream Parlor, which seemed to be in much better shape than he had seen it last.

The cobblestone path near the front had been repaired pristinely, the umbrellas had been straightened and put back where they belonged with the usual chairs and tables set underneath them, and the glass window near the front had been fully repaired.

A man with a bucket of magical golden paint and a tiny brush was drawing lettering onto it, spelling out the name of the shop.

Harry walked into the shop, the bell above the door ringing as he stepped in and closed the door behind him. The insides of the shop were nowhere near as repaired as the exterior. The display counter which showed off many different colors of ice cream was still in pieces; the part where the cast iron bench had smashed through it had been caved in with the bench still very much there; and there were large metal containers of ice cream strewn about, leaking their contents onto the floor.

Mr. Fortescue was sitting in a chair near the middle with a shot glass and a newly opened bottle of Firewhiskey on the table in front of him.

"Parlor's closed for today I'm afraid," Mr. Fortescue said without looking in his direction, his voice sounding rather dejected. Harry frowned. Seeing the usually cheerful man so down was rather depressing.

"It's me, Mr. Fortescue, Harry. Are you alright?" Harry asked.

"Harry?" Mr. Fortescue asked, turning around to take a look, "What are you doing here young man? Shouldn't you be at home?"

"I came down to help out with the repairs…but er…are you alright sir?" Harry asked, walking over to him before uprighting one of the fallen chairs and sitting down on it.

"I am alright Harry," he said, before downing the shot of Firewhiskey and pouring another, "It has…It has just been a difficult few weeks, what with Knuckles disappearing and yesterday…I doubt the shop would even be standing if that-whatever the papers are calling him-if that Hood hadn't interfered. People might not return to the Alley for weeks now…how am I supposed to keep the shop open? How-"

He paused, catching himself mid-sentence, before shaking his head and apologetically saying, "It…It's not right for me to be putting all this on you, Harry. I'm sorry."

"It's alright. Ellie says that talking about it helps," Harry said, waving away the apology.

"You're a kind boy, Harry," Fortescue replied with a smile, "But an old man's burdens are his own to bear."

"I…If you say so, Mr. Fortescue," Harry said, dropping the subject as he looked around at the state of the shop around him, noting with a smile that it wouldn't take long to clean the place up. A few Vanishing charms and _Scourgios_ on the floor, _Reparos_ on the display…the half-ton cast iron bench that was wedged halfway through that display could be a problem though…especially since he wasn't allowed to use magic outside school.

The Underage Magic Restriction was a restriction he hadn't needed to worry about in a long while, but today, it was important.

His eyes caught sight of the broom stand near the corner of the room with a couple of brooms resting there. If they were magical, they could work.

'Observe' he thought and a window popped up.

 **Comet 260**

 **The Comet 260 is a broomstick manufactured by the Comet Trading Company. It is to be noted that the Comet 260 looks good but does not offer much in performance compared to other brooms. The broomstick is rather cheaper than other broomsticks, making it the broom you would find in most wizarding households and establishments.**

 **Top Speed: 90 kmph**

Perfect.

Turning to Mr. Fortescue, he asked, "Do you remember how to cast a Feather-light charm, Mr. Fortescue?"

Mr. Fortescue looked up, a bit startled and confused by the question before he shook his head. Harry had figured as much. If wizarding-parents didn't use it to lighten the trunks of their students when they went to Hogwarts, it was unlikely that the charm was very well-known. It was a shame, really, since it was such a useful spell to have in one's arsenal.

Standing up, he headed over to the broom stand and picked up the brooms before he grabbed a piece of rope from a nearby shelf and tied both of the brooms to the bench and placed a hand on each of them.

With a grin, he watched the wondrous look on Mr. Fortescue's face as the bench lifted from the floor and slowly floated upwards before settling in a gentle float a couple of inches above the tiled floor. Guiding the brooms and bench with soft pushes of mana and the occasional bit of Aeromancy, he guided them to the door, which was a bit too small to fit his rather unorthodox piece of luggage.

Turning to Mr. Fortescue, he checked his Status.

 **Florean Fortescue Lv- 53 (Status: Intoxicated)**

 **HP: 15250/15250**

 **MP: 6050/8000**

He sent out his mana, letting it seep into the older man before he activated his Healing ability.

Ping!

 **Do you wish to heal - Status: Intoxicated**

 **YES/NO?**

Pressing yes, he asked, "Mr. Fortescue, a little help?"

That seemed to shake him out of his stupor. Pushing away the shot of Firewhiskey that he had been holding ever since Harry had sat down with him, he got to his feet and pulled out his wand with a grin on his face, his blues seemingly pushed back at seeing Harry at work.

"Of course."

With a spell from him, the door had widened up and Harry had glided the bench through it, floating it all the way across the street and with a stealthy bit of Aeromancy, straightening it and lowering it down onto the ground.

Now, young Harry Potter considered himself very much stealthier than your average wizard, but not even he could float a large bench thrice his size using a pair of brooms across an Alley swarming with people and then set it down without attracting attention. And attract attention he did. Shopkeepers, Aurors, and even a couple of Unspeakables started muttering about, and soon, the whole Alley was buzzing with the news that Harry Potter was here, helping the shopkeepers rebuild.

"Look! It's Harry Potter…"

"What is he doing here? Is he here to help…"

"See how he used the brooms! Ingenious! How…"

And so, an unexpected chain reaction started, much to Harry's pleasant surprise. Seeing him at work, a bunch of the Aurors who were standing there guarding the site of the crime came over and joined in, casting _Reparos_ and helping clean up the Alley and the shops. Seeing his Aurors off their asses and working to fix up the place, an important looking Auror; presumably the Sergeant; approached Harry soon afterward and asked him if he would like a few hours' exemption from the Statute to help with the repairs, and Harry replied with an excited yes.

With his Holly wand in hand and Mr. Fortescue's help, Harry had the Parlor cleaned up in no time.

"Old Ollivander could use some help, I'm sure," Mr. Fortescue had told him when he had asked if any of the other shopkeepers needed his help after he had finished his reward, a large Sundae almost as humongous as his head.

And so Harry had found his way to the Ollivander's Wand Shop, the walls of which seemed to be back in order thanks to two Aurors waving their wands around, making the rubble rise back up and form the walls that they were once a part of.

"Is Mr. Ollivander inside?" Harry drew their attention and asked them, to which they nodded and then proceeded to stare at him as he opened the door and stepped inside.

Other than the cracking plaster and dried paint falling off the still-being-repaired walls, the inside of the shop seemed almost entirely back to how Harry remembered it, empty except for a single, spindly chair where Ollivander matched the wands to their wizards. Upon it sat Mr. Ollivander himself, a rather enormous pile of wands to his one side and a large stack of shiny new boxes to his other.

The ancient magic that Harry had felt the first time he had stepped into the shop was still very much there…entirely unaffected by the destruction and reconstruction of the building around it. Harry's fingers shivered as his hair stood on its end.

The magic was looking him over, pressing down on him, and making sure he wasn't a threat…

"Good morning, Mr. Ollivander," Harry said, drawing the man's attention to him. The magical weight on him lightened as the owner of the shop turned to look at him with a mysterious smile.

"Mr. Potter," he said with a smile, "Holly and phoenix feather, eleven inches, nice and supple, as well as yew and phoenix feather, thirteen and a half inches, firm. Tell me, have my wands been serving you well?"

"They have, thank you sir," Harry said with a nod, reminding himself that Ollivander was well aware of the fact that he owned Riddle's wand too, before asking, "I heard you were injured in the attack yesterday, Mr. Ollivander. Have you recovered?"

"I have indeed. Thank you very much for your concern," he said, "And I certainly appreciate you coming here to help. I'm sure Mr. Maroon's photographs will do very well to ease the fears of the people and help them return to the Alley."

Mr. Maroon, Harry realized, must have been the Daily Prophet photographer who had been scampering up and down the Alley all day long, taking photos of him and other Aurors helping with the repairs of the Alley. Harry knew that the papers would be publishing those pictures front and center the next day, which was exactly what he wanted to happen.

With a nod, Harry accepted the gratitude and asked, "Is there anything I can help you with, Mr. Ollivander?"

There was indeed.

Ollivander had been sitting there since that morning arranging the wands and placing them into new boxes before sending them off to their respective places on their shelves. Luckily…or unluckily depending on whether you were the one doing the packing…most of the wands had survived the destruction of the building. So Harry transfigured a piece of rubble into a chair, took a seat, and got to work, helping the man arrange and package his wands back up.

It was tedious work, but the old man certainly appreciated the company and was more than willing to share stories and answer all of Harry's questions about wands and their reasons and properties.

"Mr. Ollivander," Harry had asked as he packed his 51st wand, "you keep mentioning how rigid a wand is, every time you meet people. How does it matter when it comes to magic? Isn't that just dependant upon the wood?"

"Partly, yes," the old wandmaker replied, "but mostly when it comes to matching wizard to the wand, the flexibility or rigidity denotes the degree of adaptability and willingness to change possessed by the wand-and-owner pair. But do keep in mind that this factor ought not to be considered separately from the wand core and length, nor the wood itself, as you mentioned. The owner's life experiences and style of magic contribute to shaping a wand as well. That is what makes a wand unique."

"Unique? So there are wands that are more powerful than others?"

A smile spread across Ollivander's face, "I cannot tell you, young Harry, how nice it is to have an inquisitive soul in this shop again. The answer depends on your definition of power. If you call offensive magic powerful, then your wand will serve you well. If you wish to master the stability and control of transfiguration and potions, then another core might suit you better. You must also remember Harry, that all wands are created equal. They only become great through their journeys with their owners."

There was a silence after that particular conversation which lasted for a few dozen more wands, but it didn't take much longer after that for Harry to figure out yet another question to ask.

"What about the lengths? I've seen Hagrid's new wand that he got after he was released from Azkaban. It was humongous. Does that mean that the size of the wand is related to the height of the wizard?"

"To some degree, yes," the wandmaker replied, "but mostly it speaks to the character of a wizard rather than their stature. In my experience, longer wands might suit taller wizards, but they tend to be drawn to bigger personalities, and those of a more spacious and dramatic style of magic. Neater wands favor more a refined style. Most wands will be in the range of between nine and fourteen inches. While I have sold wands eight inches and under as well as ones over fifteen inches, these are exceptionally rare. Abnormally short wands do tend to select those in whose character something is lacking, though, rather than because they are physically undersized."

Harry's eyebrows rose to his hairline. This seemed like an incredible way to look into the character of a wizard.

Ping!

 **Due to learning new information on how to categorize Witches and Wizards, a skill has leveled up!**

 **Observe Lv-8 (10%)**

 **By Observing a target one will get information about said object**

 **-Max HP,MP, stats, detailed info, their emotions and will give their opinion of you.**

Ping!

 **For** **learning about a secret art from its master, take +2 INT**

 **Ping!**

 **For learning how to read a person from their characteristics and wands, take +1 WIS**

Such was how Harry spent his time till the evening crept in, learning more about Wandlore and the characters that wands saw in the wizards that they chose. Ollivander told him a lot more of how the dozens of types of wand wood related to a person's character, but not before extracting a promise that he wouldn't reveal all of this to anyone without his express permission.

His Observe had leveled up two more times by the time they were down to their last few wands leaving him at a solid level 10.

 **Due to learning new information on how to categorize Witches and Wizards, a skill has leveled up!**

 **Observe Lv-10 (35%)**

 **By Observing a target one will get information about said object**

 **-Max HP,MP, stats, detailed info, their emotions and will give their opinion of you.**

Harry didn't know why he was getting the special treatment of being given the permission to know about Wandlore and knowledge that had been kept secret for so long, but he had a feeling that the old man always knew more than he let on.

Those grey eyes almost felt like they were casting a Scrying spell of their own.

When the clock struck seven in the evening, a ping sounded in Harry's ears and the two Aurors who had been helping fix the outside of the shop stepped inside to talk to Mr. Ollivander.

Ping!

 **Quest Success!**

 **Help in the rebuilding of at least 2 shops in Diagon Alley. Rewards dependent upon the shops.**

 **Rewards,**

 **15000 exp**

 **Ice Cream**

 **Knowledge on Wandlore**

Harry quickly waved the window away and listened to what the Aurors were saying.

"Good evening Mr. Ollivander, the walls are pretty much done and dusted, but we couldn't get the paint finished up in time."

"I'm afraid we just received a letter from the Ministry," the other Auror said, "They are about to question the Muggle that attacked the Alley yesterday. They want the whole investigation team back at the Ministry with their findings as soon as possible."

Harry withheld his immediate urge to correct the men with a curt 'squib', knowing that they hadn't revealed that particular bit of information in the papers, and him knowing about it would be extremely suspicious.

Besides, if Jarvis was going to be interrogated, he wanted to be there.

"Mr. Potter," one of them asked, "It's getting really dark and a lot of people have heard of you being here for the repairs. Our Sergeant has asked that we apparate you home before we head back to the Ministry, just for your safety."

Before Harry could refuse, Ollivander intervened, "I'll be seeing Mr. Potter back to his home myself. Please do assure your Sergeant that he will be perfectly safe with me."

"Er…are you're sure, Mr. Ollivander?"

"I am. Now, Mr. Stewart and Mr. Benjamin, grab one of those wand holsters each from the shelf on your right for yourselves, will you? A token of my gratitude for your help today, gentlemen."

They happily thanked Ollivander for his gift and soon left, leaving the two of them alone. As soon as the two Aurors were out of the door, Ollivander immediately turned to him and asked, "I presume you want to go to the Ministry and witness that young boy's questioning yourself?"

Harry's brain ground to a halt for a moment.

Yep, he thought to himself dazedly, the old man definitely knew more than he was supposed to. Slowly pushing his brain back into motion, he did the next thing that made sense.

'Observe' he thought, looking at him.

 **Observe Unsuccessful!**

 **Error: Target has active Scrying Magic Protection.**

Ollivander raised an eyebrow, "Really, Harry?"

Harry wanted to push him, but after much hesitation, decided not to. If the old man wanted to out him, he could've done so very easily when there had been two Aurors in the room. Besides, Harry had a strong feeling that he didn't.

"I do not have any interest in revealing your secrets, Harry, just I have never revealed Tom Riddle's identity to the world at large. My work is to observe, not interfere," Ollivander further assured, and upon seeing Harry nod, continued, "I suspect that they will be starting the questioning soon. I'd say perhaps in one of the Interrogation rooms in the Auror Headquarters. Number Two comes to mind. You should probably get going if you wish to make it."

"Good to know," Harry muttered uneasily, wondering how the old man knew all this as he quickly said his goodbyes and left the shop. It was getting rather ridiculous how many people knew about his secrets. That list needed to stop growing immediately.

Stepping into a small side alley, Harry pulled out his Jacket and Cloak, putting them both on before he disapparated, the magic telephone box leading into the underground Ministry as the destination in mind.

He reappeared in front of the visitor's entrance of the Ministry of Magic-the magic telephone booth that stood in front of a heavily graffitied wall. If Ollivander's hunch was to be believed, he didn't have time to go get Hedwig, nor did he want to risk her being seen somehow.

Not wanting to leave any record of his entrance, he dropped into an ID before stepping into the booth and blowing up the floor underneath him with a well-powered Iron Fist. As soon as the floor shattered, Harry dropped down an immense elevator shaft. For a brief second, the little square of light above him kept growing smaller and smaller before it gave way into the immense hallway with dark-wood flooring that he knew led into the Ministry Atrium.

Using Aeromancy to catch his fall and land safely, he wasted no time in dashing down the empty hall towards the nearest elevator, inside which he reappeared into the real world with a quick "ID Escape."

Luckily for him, it was the evening and well after the time most people left for home, so there weren't as many people around and the elevator was empty.

Harry pressed the button, and with a rattle and shake, the elevator started moving.

Soon enough, the voice announced, "Level Two, Department of Magical Law Enforcement, including the Improper Use of Magic Office, Auror Headquarters, and Wizengamot Administration Services."

Harry headed out and dashed down the corridor of doors that led to the Wizengamot offices, reaching the end where a set of large heavy oak doors were located. Pushing them open, Harry stepped in and emerged in a large cluttered open area divided into cubicles. Shaking off the hauntingly empty feeling that set in as soon as he had stepped into the enormous room, he headed inwards.

A lopsided sign on the nearest cubicle confirmed where he was.

 _Auror Headquarters._

Harry darted through the Auror Headquarters; he had passed through the room before when he had rescued Lisa, and he had a good idea of where the Interrogation rooms were; flitting through the narrow winding spaces between cubicles as he made his way to the right into a corridors with doors on either side with signs on them.

It didn't take him long to find the room he was looking for. It was only the second from the end and had a sign on it.

 _Interrogation Room #2_

Harry stepped inside and squeezed himself into as much of a corner as he could to avoid bumping into someone as he came back into the real world, before taking a deep breath and muttering the command under his breath.

"ID Escape."

* * *

Alastor Moody was not good at a lot of things.

He was not a good people person. He was not good at being polite. He was not a good leader. He was not a good runner. But if there was one thing Alastor Moody was incredibly and undeniably good at, it was at being an Auror.

He saw theories and connections where most saw nothing, had the skill to intimidate, and the stomach to do what was necessary. Moreover, he was sharp as a Qatarian blade and he was near unbeatable in a duel.

Most of all, he was a man who did his research.

And so, when he took upon himself the task of finding the mysterious _Hood_ as the newspaper had decided to call him, Moody had headed to the archives to start a file and pool all the data he could find on this mysterious person.

Imagine his surprise, when he came to know from the Archivist that someone else had already started a private file on the man and had been adding to it pretty regularly. Much to his further surprise, upon some further digging, he realized that it was a Junior Auror, one less than half-a-year into her time as the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. It was highly unusual for Junior Aurors to go down to the archives on their own and start cases that they hadn't been assigned; not because they were not authorized to; but because their workload was already extremely heavy from all the paperwork they had to handle.

The case was growing more and more curious by the minute.

He learned the full story from Emmeline Vance, one of the more talented of the newer crop of Aurors. It wasn't something that he had known, so it was displeasing for him to learn the story had been circulating in the Department rumor mill ever since August the previous year.

Apparently, this girl, Tonks, the one whose admission into the Academy and training he had fast-tracked a couple of years ago as a favor to Severus Snape, had been rescued by this mysterious man from a group of smugglers intending to sell her for experimentation. He had then reappeared the next year to bring them a rescued girl that had been abused sexually and physically by her father, almost killing the father in the process. Then again finally at the Diagon Alley attack.

This vigilante had been operating for a _while_ now. He had just been forced to reveal himself due to the Diagon incident.

After even more research and deliberation, he had finally reached an important decision regarding the case and the Auror it seemed to circle around, which was the reason why Junior Auror Nymphadora Tonks stood in his modestly spaced cubicle in the Auror Headquarters.

"D'you know why I had you called here? Do you?"

"No sir, I don't," the Junior Auror replied stiffly.

"Hmm. I'd say so," he gruffly said, pushing a chair in her direction with his leg, which had been sitting unscrewed on his desk, "Sit."

Tonks took the seat gingerly, clearly not very comfortable and still not sure why she had been summoned. Her frequent morbid glances at the prosthetic magical eye that was jiggling around in a glass of water beside him were more than enough for him to realize that.

Moody wasn't one to dawdle, so he immediately got to the point. "You, Auror Tonks. You've been keeping a file. A file on that kid who beat up and captured the Squib kid in the Alley yesterday. I want it."

The Junior Auror's expression immediately turned from weary to suspicious. "How do you know…it was a kid? And why do you want it?"

Moody smiled victoriously, "Ah, so you've been doing this properly, haven't you? Good. Proves that I wasn't wrong. I want that file because I've found some information on him. Nasty stuff. Want to follow it up and make sure he isn't a psychopathic killer or something."

"What would that be?" she asked, her voice shaking slightly.

"The kid's jacket," Moody said, figuring that he might as well spare that little nugget of information in exchange for the trove he was going to get in return, "It was dark magic. Made by the sacrifice of a magical life. Dark stuff that even my…special eye can't see through."

Her eyes widened before she leaned back into her seat. With a little bit of surprise, he watched her think for a minute and then shake her head. "I…I won't give it to you, sir. It's my personal case. I'm not required to give any of it over to someone else halfway through my investigation. The only reason I put the information on file was so that I couldn't be forced out of it by someone above my pay grade. I'm not giving it up now."

Moody stared at her before nodding. He had thought that something like this might happen, despite believing it to be unlikely. The kid was talented. She had some of the highest numbers of convictions in the last decade, ever since his own time as a newbie.

"I figured as much. But do consider it. I've got more resources and contacts than you ever had. I could help you find out who that kid is and finish this in no time at all."

"It won't matter if I'm not there solving it."

There was a moment of silence filled by nothing but the splashing around of the eyeball jumping up and down in the glass of water.

"Fine then," he finally said, his decision made, "You'll be there with me, solving it."

The girl stared at him, confused, before the meaning of it struck her and her jaw dropped open.

"Let me be perfectly clear," he said before she could burst into tears or something equally dramatic and irritating, "Once we find out who this kid is, there's a bloody good chance that he won't react well to us. Depending on how he reacts and if he did kill someone, we either take him in or take him down. There is no gentler option. No turning the blind eye to his acts of vigilante justice like beating up people and rescue children if he promises keeps himself in check or some other bollocks. We make sure that he is not a threat. No matter how. Is that perfectly clear?"

"Yes, sir," Tonks said, nodding her head as if she couldn't believe where her pet investigation was getting her.

"You owe this kid your life, don't you? He saved you from those traffickers a couple of years ago. Will that be an issue if we have to bring him in?"

A moment's pause. "No, sir."

"Good. Then I suppose there is only one thing left to do," Moody said gruffly as he pulled out a piece of paper and handed it to her, "Fill that in with your personal details. Have you had a partner assigned yet?"

"No I haven't, sir," she replied, rapidly turning blue as she took the paper from him, "I've been running patrols with Auror Vance, learning the ropes from her."

"I'll smooth things over with her and Bones then. Get that paper to me with your Apparating license and identification. The Transfer paperwork should be finished by tomorrow morning. That's when we start" he said as he finished arranging out some papers onto his desk, before looking up at her with a terrifying grin, "Don't be late… _partner_."

Moody had to admit, the reaction itself almost made it worth it.

After the girl had recovered from her state of catatonic shock, he had sent her back to her cubicle, popped in his eye and fixed back his leg and headed over to the Interrogation Room.

He had an interrogation to watch over.

Stepping into the dark room, he walked over to the one-way mirror and stood beside Shacklebolt, looking into the interrogation chamber through the mirror. The kid…Jarvis Thompson, as they had learned soon after his capture…had been soon stripped of all of his ritual-gained powers by the Unspeakables and was chained to the table by a simple pair of shackles and was being interrogated by one of their best interrogators, Williamson.

"Jarvis, how much do you remember of the day you attacked Diagon Alley?"

"Nothing," the child blankly replied.

"Is he using Veritaserum?" Moody asked gruffly. Shacklebolt nodded beside him. Squibs barely had any rights in the Magical Law system. Giving Veritaserum was the fastest way to get answers…if a bit morally grey. Then again, Alastor Moody had never much cared for morality. He was a practical person like that. It was what had kept him alive all these years after all.

"Tell me what you remember of this man who told you about our world."

"He used to meet me in the park where I would go to play cricket with the other children at the orphanage. He told me about what my real parents were. Showed me what magic was. He took me one day to see the Alley too. Always wore a cloak. I never saw his face."

"And how did he give you your magical strength?"

"I was angry at my parents, so he told me that I would be stronger and will be able to take revenge on them if I wanted to. He took me to a warehouse outside the city and then asked me to close my eyes and drew stuff all over me. Then…then everything went black and I woke up here."

"Do you know anything about this man, Jarvis? Anything you noticed? Anything you gathered from his look-"

Before he could even complete the question, however, the door to the interrogation room banged open and the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge walked in, crossing the room to open the door that led into the chamber that held their prisoner.

"I'm afraid we need to wrap this up gentlemen," he announced, "The order for his transfer to Azkaban has been signed."

Moody almost physically felt a killing instinct wash over him, and his head snapped back towards the corner of the room. With a careful frown, he looked back at the Minister.

"What?! By whom?" Shacklebolt asked urgently.

"By me."

"Are you daft?!" Moody yelled, making the Minister shoot a dirty look at him. "We need him!"

"But Minister," Shacklebolt protested, "Surely you can't be serious? He is a child who was coerced and he hadn't even gotten a trial yet. We still need to find who coerced him into-"

"It doesn't matter Kingsley. The child is a Squib. Our system does not require a trial for him. The people want someone to blame Kingsley, and without this kid in Azkaban, it will be you and your squad taking the fall for this. If that happens, then you best believe that I won't be trying to help you then as much as I am trying to help you now."

"But-"

"Tomorrow then," Moody interrupted Shacklebolt, gritting his teeth "We will escort him to Azkaban on tomorrow morning's Newcastle ferry."

The Minister nodded before heading out of the room.

Out of the corner of his eye, Moody watched as the dark figure cloaked by the invisibility cloak; the one whose killing intent he had sensed; curled up his fist in anger before he vanished from the corner of the room. A small smile spread across his face.

He had imagined that the Hood would try and get into the Ministry to see his work finished, especially when he had overheard him being concerned about the prisoner's fate in the Alley, but he hadn't expected that he would be able to make it into the Interrogation room.

It was nice to see someone competent at work for once.

He grinned as he headed back to his cubicle, leaving the Transfer work to Shacklebolt and Williamson. The only good thing that had come out of this interrogation was that the Prisoner Transport to Azkaban was going to become the perfect bait to nail this guy's identity. Inadvertently, the Minister had set the bait for him. It was time now for him to spring the trap and find out who their mysterious guest was, hopefully saving the life of an innocent child in the process.

* * *

 **Let me know if you liked the chapter in a review. Helps motivate me to write.**

 **It's been 44 chapters in the making, and the Flamels finally know Harry's secret. Feels…deserved. We'll see the consequences of that soon enough. Moody is finally in the play, and as one would expect from him, he is devastatingly competent, especially with being able to see through Harry's cloak without him knowing. We have a lot more action next chapter with him and Harry.**


	45. Book-III:Harry Meet Harry

Chapter 4:

As it turned out, 'ferry from Newcastle' was a pretty vague thing to look for.

Since the break of dawn that morning, Harry had been crouched atop a container crane that stood in the Port of Tyne in Newcastle, an industrial port that connected to the River to Tyne which then further connected to the North Sea, inside which was where the Prison of Azkaban was located. The Port of Tyne was also the biggest Ministry operated magical port in the northern United Kingdom, so if there was a ferry leaving from Newcastle to Azkaban, as Auror Moody had let slip that it was, it would be leaving from here.

Or so he hoped.

Harry's Gamer's Mind was in full effect, Mage Sight was engaged, and his glowing eyes were scanning across the port, but so far, he was struggling to find anything magical in or around the Port at all.

Nothing glowed in his Mage Sight. No wards, no magical ships, no barrels of magical merchandise, no nothing. There wasn't even a wizard in sight.

It shouldn't have been surprising to him, though.

In the early 1600s, wizarding interest in transportation via ships and ferries had started dwindling alarmingly due to the advent of Portkeys and Floo. Due to that reason, politicians at the time had decided to outlaw public use of ships and ferries for transportation, a legislation which had been lumped under the International Statute of Secrecy, signed and enforced by almost every magical nation on the planet.

Thus it was decreed that Wizarding Ports in muggle areas were to be concealed by the use of Illusionary magic and the ships spelled to travel in ways that would not be noticed by anyone either magical or not. Most shipping work, other than the occasional ceremonial ship, had been reduced to the transportation of large amounts of merchandise that even portkeys couldn't carry. Magical Ports had thus been hidden away from the public eye, having become a background process that was taken care of by the people who were in charge of it.

In many ways, ports and ships were sort of like the house-elves to the Ministry. Deadly useful, but never meant to be seen.

Unfortunately for Harry, that had been all he could find about Magical Ports in the Flamel Library. No information on how the Ports were hidden. No information on where. That, he had deduced, he would probably only find in the Ministry archives.

Harry sighed tiredly, his mind drifting to his conversation last night with his guardians as he kept waiting and watching.

 _"Harry," Perenelle asked, her eyes filled with concern, "Where have you been? You were supposed to be home over six hours ago!"_

 _"I…was," Harry slowly trailed off. Having arrived back home a couple of hours after midnight, he hadn't been able to sneak past his guardians as he had hoped he'd be able to. The new anti-ID wards that they had installed had prevented him from using his IDs to sneak in. Furthermore, he hadn't planned this conversation out very well. How was he supposed to tell his guardians that he was going to do the exact thing that he had agreed to stay away from just that very same morning?_

 _The solution that he had gone for had been to not tell them and handle it by himself, avoiding all the awkward conversation and chastising, but he hadn't been lucky enough to dodge them on his way in._

 _"So…" he started, "You remember what I said about not doing this whole being a hero and rescuing people thing yesterday, right?"_

 _"Harry," Nicholas asked wearily, no doubt immediately sensing where the conversation was going. "You did mean what you said, didn't you?"_

 _"Absolutely," Harry hurriedly assured, "One hundred percent. My days of breaking into Ministry guarded places and breaking out unfairly imprisoned people are over. But…"_

 _"But what Harry?"_

 _"As it turns out," he said, trying to keep his tone upbeat, "I need to break into a Ministry guarded place and break out an unfairly imprisoned person."_

 _Hedwig let out an amused squawk from the corner of the room._

 _A moment's awkward silence hung in the air, before, instead of chastising him as Harry had expected, Nicholas leaned back into his chair with a frown and asked, "Why? What happened?"_

 _Glad that his guardians were willing to hear him out before passing judgment, Harry told them of his little spying session at the Ministry which had led to him finding out that Jarvis had simply been a pawn in a larger game, manipulated by a mysterious figure that even Jarvis himself seemed to know little about._

 _Then he told them of how Cornelius Fudge had popped in and decided to send him off to Azkaban in the name of shifting the blame from himself to someone else._

 _"I'm not surprised that the Minister pulled something like that," Perenelle muttered, "Even when we first met him to argue for your guardianship he seemed like a rather self-interested fellow. It would make sense from a political standpoint to redirect the public ire towards Jarvis."_

 _"Fine then," Nicholas said after some deliberation, "I'll handle it, Harry. It shouldn't be too hard to reach out to some old contacts through Albus and mount a rescue-"_

 _"We barely have three hours, we might not be able to reach him on such short notice," Perenelle interrupted with a frown, "Didn't you read the letter from Yao, Nicholas? She mentioned that they had met yesterday and that he had left for rural India after their meeting yesterday, looking for trails of Riddle's journey through the area. Owls would take too long to find him. Even through Patronus…no. Our Patroni aren't particularly discreet…besides, it would take too long."_

 _Harry frowned, "Patroni?"_

 _"That's a lesson for another day," Nicholas answered, before turning back to Perenelle, "We can't reach out to any of the old crowd then, not without risking exposure. I…I think that we might have to handle it ourselves."_

 _"I…erm…" Harry interrupted timidly, "I was sort of hoping to handle it all by myself-"_

 _The murderous glares he received from his guardians shut him up immediately._

A loud bang to his left dragged Harry out of his thoughts. Instantly perking up, he turned carefully to look towards his left, where he caught sight of the remnants of a bright red muggle firework dissolving into the early morning sky. It was a signal.

Nicholas had found something.

Swiftly turning on his spot, Harry disappeared from the top of the crane.

He reappeared in a small empty room a few kilometers away from the spot where he had been keeping watch, exactly where Nicholas had instructed him to go when he received the signal.

Stumbling a little as he fully rematerialized, he caught sight of Perenelle standing near a corner, leaning against the wall as she too waited for Nicholas to return from his expedition to the Ministry Library in search of the Port addresses.

Sure enough, less than a minute later, Nicholas apparated in with a near-silent swoosh, a large piece of paper clutched in his hands.

"Did you find out where the ships leave from?" Harry immediately asked.

"I did."

Nicholas conjured up a table, spreading the large piece of paper on top of it. It was a map. A map of the harbor. Except it seemed to have another plan drawn right over it, drawn in red ink…roads and winding pathways crossing over lines and buildings and streets that already existed.

"I don't understand," Harry muttered confusedly, trying to make sense of it, "Where is the Wizarding Port? What's all the stuff drawn in red? Is this a misprinted map?"

"No," Perenelle muttered from beside him, peering curiously at the map, "This isn't a misprint. It's a schematic…three dimensional."

Nicholas nodded and pointed his wand at the paper.

With a gargle and a pop, a soft blue mist erupted out of the tip of his wand and started pouring onto the paper, and from that mist rose a ghostly three-dimensional cross-sectional map depicting the Port of Tyne and all that lay under it.

The cross section of the map depicted a humongous cavern underneath the port that opened up right into the river and if the schematics on the map were to be believed, that was where the wizards had taken the port.

Underwater.

"I don't think we have the time to teach him the Bubble-head charm," Perenelle muttered as she surveyed the schematic, "Do you have any other kind of magic that would let you breathe underwater for some time, Harry?"

Harry nodded. "I can manipulate air and water well enough to keep myself breathing for at-least a few minutes."

"Good," Nicholas said, "Then your part of the plan still remains the same. As for us, we will be on brooms, cloaked and within eyesight, ready to intervene if necessary."

Harry nodded, "I'll get into the Port through one of the entrances and get onto the ship. I'll get in, grab Jarvis, handle the Aurors as quietly as I can, and then get out as fast as I can."

"And?"

"I avoid Moody at all costs," Harry said. This was one thing that the Flamels had insisted upon him doing if they were to allow him to go in and get Jarvis out by himself.

"Are you sure it's a good idea for him to go in there?" Perenelle asked concernedly.

"It isn't," Nicholas said with a frown, "We're pretty much sending him into a live trap. But the Squib needs to be freed. We can't reach Albus and we can't wait till we can. A squib wouldn't last even a few hours inside Azkaban and the only point that we can reasonably intercept and rescue him is the ferry."

Harry's mind couldn't help but pull forth yet another one of their conversations from the previous night.

 _"Don't hold anything back," Nicholas ordered as he paced around the library, pulling out books off of shelves and flipping through them one after the other, "Tell me everything about what happened. Even the tiniest bit of relevant information that the Squib or the Aurors may have let slip could help us make this whole process infinitely easier."_

 _Harry nodded from where he was sitting, closing his eyes and casting his mind backward into the night using Gamer's Mind._

 _In a singular fleeting moment, the perfect recollection of the Interrogation Room formed in his mind. Without leaving behind any detail, he started describing exactly what happened in there, starting from how he had heard the two Aurors talk about the interrogation with Ollivander and how he had then snuck into the Ministry and then into the Interrogation room._

 _Nicholas audibly took note of a lot of little things Harry mentioned, but nothing elicited quite the reaction as Harry's answer to one of his questions._

 _"The Aurors, tell me about them. Can you describe them? Did you catch their names?"_

 _"I did," Harry replied, his eyes still closed as he recollected their names, "One was Kingsley Shacklebolt, that Auror I met in the Alley before fighting Jarvis, and the other was a strange bloke called Alastor Moody. He had a really scarred face. A fake eye too, I think. Do you know him?"_

 _There was no reply._

 _"Nicholas? You there?" Harry asked, his brow furrowing._

 _Nothing again._

 _Frowning, Harry opened his eyes. Nicholas stood barely a few feet in front of him holding a book, his expression frozen. Slowly, he turned his head to look at Harry, who was growing more and more concerned, and muttered something barely audible._

 _"What's that Nicholas?" Harry asked worriedly, "I couldn't hear you."_

 _"He knows you're coming," Nicholas said, louder this time, his words sending a chill down Harry's spine, "It's a trap."_

Shaking his head, Harry interrupted the fierce bickering that had started between Nicholas and Perenelle.

"It's alright Perenelle, I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself. If I wanted to get out of there, I could always just drop into an ID or apparate and escape. Besides, with you both nearby, I doubt he could do much."

"Still," she said, "I can't help but think that we should be doing this instead of you."

"Absolutely not," Harry vehemently said, "Moody knows that I try to protect people. You yourself said that he has a soft spot for vigilantes because he used to be part of a vigilante group in the previous War. He won't go all out on me. But he might not take well to someone unknown showing up. That'd take a lot more explaining and I'm not sure even Professor Dumbledore would be able to convince him to back down from his investigation afterwards."

"He has a point," Nicholas said, "Once Albus is back, we should be able to get Alastor off Harry's trail easily without risking revealing us still being alive. Right now, though, us being directly involved is dangerous."

Reluctantly, Perenelle nodded and after a quick hug, apparated away with Nicholas.

Quickly taking a detailed look at the three-dimensional map of the Underground with Gamer's Mind active to memorize it and mark out where he would enter it, Harry pulled out his wand and pointed at the mist.

" _Finite Incantatem_ "

The mist dissolved into nothingness and Harry grabbed the map before stuffing it into his Inventory. He quickly pulled out his jacket and Invisibility Cloak before putting them on. They might not be much in terms of stealth in front of Moody's ancient magical eye, but they would hide him well in front of others.

He was about to apparate out when suddenly he noticed something strange.

It was awfully quiet inside his head.

With an amused smile, grabbed the seam of his breast pocket and shook it, chuckling at the indignant squawk that came at him in return from inside the magically expanded space.

 _"You're the worst,"_ an angry voice echoed in his head, _"I was dreaming of flying through clouds made of apples! Do you know how good that feels?!"_

"I'd imagine the apples hitting your face as you fly through them would be pretty uncomfortable," Harry pointed out.

" _Not if you eat fast enough,_ " Hedwig replied before asking, " _Is the boring stuff over yet?_ "

"I was scoping out the area and making a plan," Harry replied flatly, "It wasn't boring at all."

 _"You were sitting around brooding on the top a crane for three hours staring at nothing. It was boring enough to make me fall asleep."_

"I wasn't _brooding!_ "

Hedwig completely ignored his indignant outburst, asking, " _Where are we heading? Did Nicholas manage to find where the port is?_ "

"He did," Harry replied warily, "It is underground, but I think I have a pretty good idea of how to get in there. Problem is, it might not be very comfortable.

* * *

" _Seems pretty comfortable to me,_ " Hedwig snarked at him from inside her spacious pillow-padded expanded space in Harry's pocket.

"Just shut up," Harry growled as he painfully struggled to fit inside the narrow cylindrical post box which was barely three feet tall, ignoring the strange looks from the passing Muggles. Closing the door of the box behind him with much difficulty; he could feel a muscle pulling in his leg; he cast an Observe at the box once again.

 **Entrance to the Magical Port of Tyne**

 **The Entrance to the Magical Port of Tyne is a small post box which requires a Password to be spoken into it from the inside in order to grant passage from anyone who wishes to gain entry to the Port Cavern. It is small in size because this entrance is only used by house elves working for the Port. This password is given to this large and ugly stone gargoyle which rarely talks but is capable of doing so.**

 **Password – Merlinium Foray**

Reading from the Observe and desperately hoping that some sort of expanding charm would kick in once the password was said, Harry quickly shouted out the password, "Merlinium Foray!"

The box didn't expand. Instead, rather unexpectedly, the floor underneath him vanished.

"AAAARRRGHHH!" Harry instinctively screamed as he slid down the pipe-like structure before he realized he was giving himself away and clamped a hand onto his mouth. The slide was long…almost longer than the one at the Chamber of Secrets and just as slippery, but somehow this wasn't wetting him or his clothes as the slime from the Chamber's pipes had.

At first, the drop was almost vertical, but then it slowly leveled into an incline as it twisted and turned and carried him further and further into the ground. He could see nothing at all in the pitch black darkness below him. The sounds of the traffic and the city above faded away as an eerie silence replaced it.

For a moment somewhere in there, Harry completely lost his bearings.

After a few moments, a spot of light appeared below him and started growing rapidly. The tunnel started growing lighter and lighter, the magical dry-slime on its smooth walls becoming more and more visible as Harry tried to look down the tunnel and see what was there to catch his fall. It took his eyesight a second to see it and his mind another moment to put to place what it was.

It was the ground. Solid. Stone. Ground.

Eyes widening, Harry immediately fixed his eyes on the ground underneath and started pushing his own body to turn. It was terribly difficult to find any traction against the slippery tunnel, but despite that he managed to get a spin going, wildly chanting the three D's in his head.

'Determination Deliberation Destination Determination Deliberation Destination Determination Deliberation Destination!'

Just as the tunnel was about to run out, he felt the pressure of Apparition and vanished, reappearing on the spot where he would have splatted down onto, almost stumbling and falling into what he soon realized was a gaggle of the port house-elves who had surrounded the spot and were looking up the tunnel to see who was coming through.

Ping!

 **Due to use under stressful situations, a skill has leveled up!**

 **Silent Apparition Lv-6 (54%)**

 **Destination, Determination and Deliberation. Apparition is a magical method of transportation and is basically the magical action of travelling by having the user focus on a desired location in their mind. It is by far the fastest way to get to one's desired destination, but is tricky to pull off correctly and disastrous if botched up.**

 **Cost-40 MP per use**

Quickly waving the window away, Harry carefully stepped through the small crowd of house-elves and once he was on the other side, dusted his clothes and walked through the stacks of produce boxes that walled the path that led away from the house-elf entrance that he had slid in through.

Moments later, after Harry had lost and found himself three times, the walls ran out and Harry stepped out into the massive cavern that was the Magical Port of Tyne.

He had to stop for a moment to take in all that he was seeing because the sight in front him had stunned him to a standstill.

" _Holy cow…_ " Hedwig's astonished voice rang in his mind and Harry had to agree with the sentiment.

The cavern was enormous-at least a hundred and twenty feet tall-its roof covered in rocky stalactites and natural rock serrations. The walls were rough and exposed the gorgeous natural patterns of the rock formations, glinting in places where gemstones had been created by the enormous pressure of the earth above them. As many boxes and barrels were scattered around the damp floor as floated around overhead, magically arranging themselves and flying along to wherever they were meant to be stored.

The most incredible thing, however, was the enormous wall of water, blue and churning and powerful, that covered the entire opening face of the cavern. It sounded deafening; like a hundred angry lions roaring at once; the sound made it almost impossible to hear even his own voice.

It took a moment for Harry to realize what the enormous wall of water was.

It was the River Tyne, being held back from completely drowning the cavern by an enormous barrier of magic.

The cavern, Harry couldn't help but theorize, must have once been a natural water formation that used to be flooded by the Tyne. When the wizards had come, they pushed the water out to the mouth and then built the floor before repurposing the whole thing into a port.

In the outcrop of water that jutted out from the base of the watery wall and spanned half the floor of the cavern were a bunch of piers, at which were floating three wooden ships straight out of the 1800s-wooden masts, wooden varnished hulls, enormous mermaid figureheads the size of a decently sized house-the whole deal.

As Harry watched, the mermaid from one of the ships; the smaller one with only one over-deck floor as it's cabin; sprung to life and sprung into the water before rising up near the edge of the water and deftly untying the ropes that anchored it to the port, before diving back in and gracefully leaping out of the water near the ship once again to take her place at the bow of the ship.

Out of the corner of his eyes, Harry caught sight of a house elf waving its hands in sync with the mermaid's movement and marveled at the sheer power that the creatures wielded.

The ship slowly pushed away from the edge and towards the wall of water.

The four dark-robed wizards that stood on the deck, who seemed to be the only ones in the entire port; the whole thing seemed to be run by house elves and pre-determined magic; swiftly hurried into the cabin and shut the door after them just as the bow breached the wall of water and entered the River.

'Wizarding ships are actually submarines,' Harry thought amusedly.

Hedwig's voice broke him out his reverie and snapped him back to reality.

" _I'm all for staring at giant water walls and admiring them, but aren't we supposed to be getting onto one of those ships? What if the one that just left is the one we're supposed to get on, you dummy?_ "

With a soft curse under his breath, Harry immediately cast an Observe on the leaving ship, and sure enough,

 **H.M.S. Charon**

 **Named after the carrier of damned soul to Hades, this ship has been the official transportation vehicle for Prisoners of Azkaban for centuries. Legendary due to having held numerous incredibly powerful prisoners for their trips to the dreaded Dementor Domain including Cruesha the Terrible, Dark Lord Mortimer, as well as many others, it is protocol for this ship to carry four Law Enforcement Officers as well as one Auror along with the twelve member crew to complete the transfer process.**

 **It can last underwater for 15 minutes before it needs to resurface.**

"Fuck!" Harry cursed audibly, making a nearby house elf jump and look around confusedly as he sprung into a sprint which sped up into a Unicorn Boost powered run. Jumping over barrels and piles of produce and ropes as well as working house elves, he made a mad dash for the pier as the ship slowly sank midway into the water wall. He didn't slow down as he reached the edge of the pier, instead jumping with all his might as he dove head first straight into the water, spinning himself as soon as he breached the surface as he used Hydromancy to make the water torpedo him towards the ship as fast as he could.

As he neared the edge of the wall, he swiftly turned the direction of his motion upwards, tearing out of the water with enormous force and shooting upwards into the air in an arc, landing on one knee on the back of the ship just before it fully got submerged in the water wall.

Harry had used Aeromancy to cushion his landing a bit and whatever slight thud of his landing had remained had been covered by the roaring of the water of the river. However, being caught wasn't his biggest concern. It was breathing.

Urgently, he moved his hands in a swift circle around his himself, using Aeromancy and Hydromancy in conjunction to create a large bubble around his head as he entered the wall of water, getting submerged in the river entirely just as the bubble completely formed around his head.

It was like being in one of those sensory deprivation chambers Harry had read about.

The turbulent water made it near impossible to see beyond just a few feet in front of him-the noise of the roaring river all around him was deafening him to the point where he couldn't even hear his own thoughts and the mind-numbing pressure of water above him was taking all of his concentration to push back against.

" _Harry,_ " Hedwig's wary voice echoed in his mind, _"I think your Cloak is malfunctioning or something."_

"My Cloak is _what_?"

Looking down at his hands, he became instantly very aware that his Invisibility Cloak, which had managed to stay on him through his wild running due to the numerous sticking charms he had used, would be of little use underwater. A strange set of distortions had replaced his hands as if he was made of glass.

It wasn't that the Cloak was malfunctioning, Harry realized. It just wasn't built for being underwater. The higher refractive index was causing his invisibility to go awry.

"I need to find a place to hide," Harry muttered as quietly as he could to Hedwig, not because he was afraid of being heard, but because he was trying to conserve the air in his bubble.

Pushing against the low visibility ahead, he pushed his way through the water further towards the back of the ship, and grabbed onto one of the enormous thick piles of ropes that had been secured to the back half of the ship's deck near the stern, grunting as he used them to cover himself and make a makeshift hiding spot.

The Observe on the ship had told him that it could last 15 minutes underwater, which meant that it was bound to surface for air soon. When it did, he would make his next move, but until then, all he could do was wait.

Settling down and making sure to pump more mana into his Hydromancy to keep the water-bubble intact, he hunkered down, waiting for the ship to surface.

* * *

The ship was supposed to surface after 15 minutes, but Harry counted almost 20 increasingly breathless minutes before he started to feel the ship incline upwards and the water rush against him downwards.

" _Hold on Harry!_ " Hedwig's voice echoed in his mind, pulling him out of the haze of fuzziness he was slipping in and out of due to oxygen deprivation. Doing just as Hedwig told him to do, Harry held on tightly to the ropes and prepared himself for the ship to hit the surface.

H.M.S. Charon broke the surface with enormous force, hurtling itself out of the water so fast that for a brief second, the entire humongous ship felt as if it had been suspended mid-air by an enormous puppeteer in the clouds.

But that brief second passed soon enough and it crashed down onto the surface, wobbling uncertainly for a minute or two before settling into a smooth sail.

Quickly using a heating charm to dry himself, Harry untangled himself from the pile of ropes and headed towards the forward half of the ship, taking care to move stealthily despite his Invisibility Cloak.

After all, it wasn't much use against Moody's magical eye, which could see through solid objects and Invisibility Cloaks.

The front of the deck was surprisingly awash with activity.

Ropes were tying and untying themselves and barrels and boxes were moving themselves on their places, jumping and somersaulting around the four dark cloaked wizards who had just stepped out of the main cabin and were stretching their arms and taking in the view of the morning sea around them.

"Take the sun in as much as you can, Morbinson," Harry heard one of them tell the other, "You'll miss it when we get closer to the prison. The elves at the port were saying there's a storm beginning to form there."

He frowned. Nicholas and Perenelle were following the ship on brooms. A storm could prove problematic.

With a loud whoosh, the sails unfurled themselves, catching the winds. With a soft jerk, the ship started moving, soft sea breeze pleasantly wafting over the deck. Despite the urgency of the situation, Harry couldn't help but pause for a second to admire the majesty of the vast blue sea that stretched out till the horizon in front of him. He took a deep breath, savoring the peculiar smell of the salty air and the multitude of sounds that assaulted his ears.

The Port of Tyne was a small speck in the horizon behind them, Harry realized with a start when he looked behind him.

The ship was moving much faster than it let on.

Wrapping the Invisibility Cloak tighter around himself, he carefully inched closer to the dark-robed wizards that roamed the front deck, keeping an eye out for any sign of the one-eyed Auror who was no doubt going to be the one in charge of this little mission. A quick look at the titles floating above the wizards' heads revealed that they were the four-member Magical Law Enforcement officers who along with Moody were in charge of the transfer.

They were also, Harry decided, his first targets.

There were many ways to go about taking them out. He could dispatch them quietly by dropping them all into IDs, but that would mean that they'd be lost forever since every ID Harry created was new and different from the previous one. He could also use Unicorn Boost and his strength to throw them all overboard before they realized what was happening, but that would risk them being able to get back on board by using some form of magic. He could if he was feeling risky and didn't want to keep his stealth for much longer, try and fight them all, but fighting a bunch of trained wizards who potentially had not only been warned against his abilities but also prepared to counter them had its own set of probable issues.

Those were all ways that Harry would have attempted had he been working alone.

Luckily for him, he wasn't.

He was working with a pair of ancient wizards. More importantly, he was working with a pair of ancient wizards who were very good at a particular spell.

 _Portus_

Harry grabbed four marbles out of the small pouch on his belt and took careful aim before one by one hurling them at the wizards with as much force as he could.

 _Whoosh!_

 _Whoosh!_

 _Whoosh!_

 _Whoosh!_

Harry grinned as multiple flashes of color lit up the deck as the four Aurors were carried away by the portkeys.

Yet another reason why Nicholas had gone to the Ministry instead of Harry himself was to set up a broom cupboard with powerful enough one-sided-locking and silencing charms that even an Auror wouldn't be able to break. Harry's wand casting wasn't at that level yet, so it was for the best that Nicholas did it.

If everything went to plan, the MLE officers, unable to Apparate due to the Ministry wards, would be discovered by the Department of Muggle Affairs janitor a few hours later, unharmed, if a bit cramped.

When Perenelle had first handed him the pouch of marbles and Harry had first observed them, he had been very impressed.

 **Impact Activated Portkeys**

 **A marble enchanted to be a one time use Portkey. A Portkey is an object enchanted to instantly bring anyone touching it to a specific location. Travelling by Portkey is said to feel like having a hook "somewhere behind the navel" pulling the traveler to their location. This particular Portkey is activated by impact at high velocities.**

 **Destination: Ministry Broom Cupboard #24**

It was an impressive bit of magic done by Perenelle with a little bit of Arithmancy to modify the normal touch-activated enchantment into an impact-activated one. It was also something that Harry doubted he would have ever thought of, knowing for a fact that he would have taken the path of least resistance and simply dumped the MLE officers overboard, risking them coming back or getting very hurt.

It was certainly nice to have help.

With the MLE out of the way, the only one he had to worry about was Moody. Harry had been extremely stealthy with the way he had dispatched the officers, so with a bit of luck, the Auror would hopefully none the wiser about his missing underlings.

Carefully, Harry tiptoed over to the door that led into the over-deck cabin of the ship, which had been left open by the MLE officers, and stepped into it, quietly, taking in the room inside.

The inside of the walls had been lined with obsidian and the room had been split into two parts by a wall of iron bars that seemed like they belonged in a jail rather than on a ship. It was locked by an enormous lock on the door. One part, which the door opened into, was probably for the Aurors. It had spare sets of robes hanging from the walls, a couple of leather suitcases on the floor, and two benches to sit on. The other was where Jarvis lay unconscious in tattered clothes bound to the wall by shackles that bound his wrists and ankles.

The boy looked broken…hungry…nothing like the strong boy Harry had fought in the Alley.

Harry eyed the shackles on him. Judging by the way they glowed even to the naked eye, he had a feeling that they weren't lacking in magical protection.

The room was empty otherwise.

" _Where's Moody?_ " Hedwig asked warily in his head.

"I don't know," muttered Harry as he strode further in and took the lock into his hands, ignoring the sting that his hands felt as soon as he touched it, attempting to crush it with his enhanced strength. It didn't even dent. He tried the bars next. They were also impossible to bend.

Hedwig was quick to catch on. " _Spelled indestructible, no doubt._ "

Harry nodded, frowning, before he activated Mage Sight. A soft yellow ward surrounded the lock as well as the chains that bound Jarvis, which he observed.

 **Aegean Ward**

 **A very powerful shielding spell used protect metalwork, locks, and other inanimate equipment from tampering and destruction. It is widely used in security and law enforcement agencies as a protective ward to contain and secure objects and people. It takes 5 years of learning in the Auror academy to gain skill enough to cast this.**

It was Moody's handiwork. Harry had no doubt about that. With a deep breath, he activated Runic Burnout on the Aegean ward.

Ping!

 **Runic Burnout Lv-6 (21%)**

 **A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. A common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.**

 **Do you wish to use it on: Aegean Ward?**

 **YES/NO**

Lighting a flame in one hand, Harry pressed yes.

Ping!

 **Specified Ward is too complex for your current level. You need to have a minimum of level 8 Runic Burnout to break it.**

Harry stared at the message aghast.

He had never encountered such a ward that he had been unable to take down, even ones created by Dumbledore and Nicholas! How could he not take down some protection ward! And with such inconvenient timing! Was complexity that big a factor in his Runic Burnout skill?!

Distracted as he was, Harry almost didn't react in time when a red window popped up in front of him.

Ping!

 **Area Sense: Incoming Dangerous Spell!**

Eyes widening, almost instinctively Harry blurted out, "ID Create!"

And just like that, a red tint overtook his world and suddenly, the whole ship vanished from all around him. Harry screamed as he dropped suddenly, hitting the water like a wall of cement.

He sank like a rock, shaking his arms wildly as he tried to swim. It took him a wildly panicky second to get his bearings back and activate Gamer's Mind, which gave him the mental fortitude to use Hydromancy to turn and push himself back towards the surface.

Up at the surface, there was no ship in sight.

" _What was that about?!_ " Hedwig's incredulous voice echoed in his mind.

"The IDs had no vehicles! No moving stuff!" Harry snapped angrily, reiterating one of the few rules that the ID had different than the real world, quite pissed with himself for letting that little fact slip by himself in a crucial moment, "Someone cast a spell at my back and I acted on instinct. I didn't even _think_!"

" _You need to get back there as soon as possible, then._ "

Agreeing and quickly muttering the counter-command, Harry brought them back to the real world, where the ship had left them a few hundred feet behind.

Powerfully twisting the water under him to propel him forward, Harry quickly caught up with the ship before shooting himself upward with a wave of his arm, catching onto a small ledge on the rear end of the hull before using it to steady himself and find footing below him. Throwing his weight around, he built up a good enough swing before using the entirety of his now immense STR to swing himself upward, grabbing onto the lip of another ledge.

Swing after swing, he propelled himself upwards until he grabbed hold of the railing of the deck and pulled himself up onto the edge, shimmying along the edge for a bit before jumping over onto the deck and sprinting quietly around to the entrance of the cabin.

Carefully, he peeked in with Mage Sight active. Someone had shot a spell at him from behind, presumably Moody, and he had no intention of walking into another trap.

The person inside, however, was definitely not Moody.

It was a taller man, well built, glowing a bright and powerful green in his mage sight. He was holding a wand in his hand, tapping away at the lock.

"Observe," Harry muttered under his breath.

 **?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?**

 **Lv-?**

 **HP-?/?**

 **MP-?/?**

 **Race-Wizard**

 **Str-?**

 **Vit-?**

 **Dex-?**

 **Int-?**

 **Wis-?**

 **Luc-?**

 **?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?-?**

Harry's eyes lifted into his hairline as he read the results. This wasn't Moody. He'd been able to read Moody perfectly fine the previous day. This was someone else much more powerful.

Confirming Harry's suspicions, barely a moment later, the lock opened up with a snap and the gate slid open.

Realizing that the mysterious super-powerful wizard was about to take Jarvis to only heavens-knew-where, Harry decided that it would probably be best to intervene as soon as he could, preferably not violently since he would probably end up getting destroyed. Thus coming to a conclusion, before the mysterious figure could reach Jarvis, Harry took off his Cloak, stuffed it into his inventory.

" **It's a bit rude to introduce yourself with a spell to the back, don't you think?** " he asked with his wolf-voice and Bloodlust active as he took a deep breath and stepped inside.

A number of things happened simultaneously the moment Harry's feet crossed the threshold of the door.

The door slammed shut, hitting the heel of Harry's feet rather painfully. The mysterious wizard turned around rapidly, the tip of his wand glowing bright red. Also at the same instant, large burst of magic engulfed the whole ship and the cabin, washing over his senses and blinding his Mage sight.

Then Time froze.

Not time, Harry realized, as a hidden door beside Jarvis swung open and Moody strode out, his mangled face twisted into a wide grin and the fake eye revolving around wildly.

It was them that had frozen.

"I certainly agree, lad," he said, sounding positively chuffed with himself, "It does seem pretty rude."

* * *

The first thing Moody did after stepping out and saying his kick-ass line, which Harry decided he had probably been thinking up for the last hour while he had been shut in that hidden compartment, was search the mysterious man.

There wasn't much to be found.

The man's wand refused to come away from his hand despite having lost the glow on its tip and he had literally nothing else on his person other than the clothes on his back. His face seemed to be covered with an _Obfuscation_ charm that made him almost entirely unrecognizable and impossible to place.

Harry could only imagine that he had prepared for the eventuality of being caught, just like he had.

When Moody started searching Harry, he didn't find anything other than the pouch of Portkey Marbles that Harry had attached to his belt, which he yanked free and started to inspect. Hedwig's pocket had been enchanted to be hidden by Perenelle and that was an enchantment that thankfully not even Moody's eye could pierce.

The pouch, though, was carefully made trap. A Portkey that would activate and carry away whoever took it off of Harry's belt. Much to Harry's distraught shock, however, it simply glowed blue in Moody's hand for a second before it imploded into nothingness and disappeared.

The Auror, instead of being angry, seemed impressed.

"Clever boy! You knew! You knew that I knew! And your little trap would've worked too if it hadn't been for the Anti-Portkey wards! You, little lad, would have made for an amazing Auror! I'm almost regretting catching you," Moody said, patting Harry's back.

"Now you!" he said, his expression doing a full 180 as soon as he turned from him to the mystery man. "You are an anomaly. You shouldn't have known when the boat was scheduled to leave. You shouldn't have been able to break that Aegean ward. You shouldn't have been able to apparate onto a moving ship either."

He was almost nose-to-nose with the man and his wand was digging into his gut.

"Most importantly, your _Obfuscation_ charm shouldn't be working on my eye. Tell me. Why is that happening?"

With a wave of Moody's wand, Harry's tongue and face unfroze, and he was able to speak. So was the mystery man, apparently.

"It's nice to see you, Professor," he said, and even through the _Obfuscation_ charm it was obvious that he was smiling. His voice was obviously masked. It had a sort of metallic quality to it that only came from some of the voice modulating charms Harry had read about in the Flamel library.

Moody frowned, "Dunno what you're talking about. Haven't taught anyone anything a day in my life, no matter how much that old Dumbledore wanted me to. Now, do be a lad and stop wasting my time, will you? How is it that your charm works on my eyes?"

"Very well," the man graciously said, "My charm works on your eye because I am using a version of it was modified to subvert Ancient Sumerian revealing spells."

"How?" Moody asked, sounding intrigued, "I've been working on a spell like that for almost a year now."

"You'll figure it out," the man almost sounded amused with himself.

Moody shot him a dirty look, "How about you don't be a smartass and let me know if I'm getting this right, huh? Did you know that you need Auror training to break that Aegean ward? Of course you did, you were weaving through that ward too easily to not have been trained by someone from the academy. I'm guessing you're a rookie…no…you also knew the Azkaban transfer schedule and naval routes well enough to sneak aboard, so you have to be a senior. Maybe retired…no…you're too young…you quit. Am I wrong?"

The man shook his head, "Sharp as always, Auror Moody."

"Good to know. Now you see, Mr. Mysterious, we find ourselves at an impasse. Our young friend there," Moody said, pointing at Harry, "He is here to rescue Mr. Thompson there. That's all well and good, since I was the one who wanted him to come. You, on the other hand, are not invited. So the only reason you could be here is that you were the one who performed those dark rituals on the poor boy. And now, you're here to finish the job. I, obviously, cannot let that happen. So I suppose that this is where I inform you that you are officially under arrest."

With a twist of Moody's wand, the man's jaw tightened and he could speak no more. Then he turned to Harry.

"You," he said to Harry, "You have become quite the legend at the Auror Headquarters. I don't think the Ministry will prosecute you after you helped stop the attack at Diagon, but your identity will be exposed and your little hero-act will be over."

" _Harry! You need to get out of here! If people know who you are then Nicholas and Perenelle would be under serious risk of exposure!_ " Hedwig reminded worriedly.

Harry agreed. As much as he wanted to save Jarvis, he was a guy who had his list of priorities straight. Nicholas and Perenelle were way too up on that list to risk their lives coming under attack.

Yet even as the thought completed itself in his mind, a guilty weight settled into his stomach.

"Don't worry," Moody assured, unaware of Harry's inner turmoil, "Maybe you could train to…refine…your skills a bit more and then they'll let you join the DMLE. You'd do well there, I'd reckon."

'No,' Harry thought to himself, ignoring Moody's attempts at…whatever he was attempting to do. This was beyond just him and his guardians. If Voldemort found out they were alive he and his acolytes would never stop coming for their knowledge and the Stone, and if heavens forbid they got their hands on them, they would be unstoppable. Not to mention the amount of people who would come after Harry!

Thus, finally making up his mind, Harry started trying every single command he could, keeping in mind what Nicholas had told him about Mad-Eye Moody.

" _If you encounter him, get out of there. Don't fight. Don't hide. Don't try to trick him. Just get out. Despite all that you can do, Alastor Moody is one of the most formidable fighters the Wizarding World has ever seen. He is quick with a wand, quicker wandless, and is a master of twelve different forms of offensive magic. The man is sharp, paranoid and very cunning. He has taken down Dark Lords and terrorists and dragons and dementors. If you fight, I can guarantee that you will lose._ "

That was exactly what Harry was trying to do. Get out. Nicholas was right. Moody was cunning. He had masterfully dissected all of Harry's abilities that he knew of and had come up with a perfect way to neutralize him in a little more than a day.

Unluckily for him though, he didn't know _all_ of Harry's abilities.

When none of his offensive magic or spells worked, Harry moved onto his passive skills. ID failed. Mage Sight was still active, if a little blinding, so when he thought, 'Observe' and a bunch of windows popped up, almost yelped in shock.

Ping!

 **Magenium Ward**

 **A ward that functions by filling the area inside it with magic to the point where no more magic can be accepted into the surroundings, preventing those captured inside from using magic in any form.**

Ping!

 **Trivyami Anti Transportation Ward**

 **A ward that prevents the use of all Transportation magic such as Dimensional Travel, Floo, Apparition, Portkeys, etc. It is used to contain wizards and witches and prevent them from escaping a certain confined area. This ward is based upon a Nepali spell.**

Ping!

 **Paralysis Ward**

 **A ward that paralyzes everyone except the caster in the area of effect. It is very difficult and complicated to put together and often takes hours of preparation before it can be put together. Due to that reason, they are rarely used these days anymore.**

Harry almost grinned as he read the Magenium Ward description and a plan finally formed in his head. He couldn't push magic out of him, but having exhausted a large amount of his own mana, he had no problem sucking it in.

'Runic Burnout,' he thought, and the window popped up.

Ping!

 **Runic Burnout Lv-6 (89%)**

 **A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. A common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.**

 **Do you wish to use it on: Magenium Ward, Trivyami Anti Transportation Ward, Paralysis Ward, as well as 8 more connected wards?**

 **YES/NO**

'Eight more connected wards?' Harry thought with a frown. This could really be a bad idea.

A wand poking at the seam of his jacket hood immediately pulled Harry's attention back to Moody. He was running his wand along the edge of his hood, muttering spell after spell, his unpleasant smelling breath washing over Harry's face after every word he spoke.

Finishing up running his wand over Harry's hood, he moved back a few steps before pointing his wand at him. "It's a powerful piece of clothing, that jacket you've got there. Power of self-sacrifice is a terribly strong bit of magic. Ancient. Tricky too. It took a bit of work to find a way to nullify its protections, but find it I did. What do you say, eh? I reckon it's time we see who is under that hood."

The tip of Moody's wand started glowing an ominous purple and Harry's eyes widened as he realized that Moody had figured out a way to take his hood down.

Finally throwing caution to the wind, he pressed Yes.

Ping!

 **Due to excessive and reckless use a skill has leveled up thrice!**

 **Runic Burnout Lv-9 (23%)**

 **A precise sucking of magic from a ward by using it to refill one's own core. It starts causing damage to HP when magic continues to be sucked after the MP is full. A common way to get around it is to use up mana as fast as it comes in.**

There was a moment of complete silence in which Harry rejoiced at getting the required number of level ups to break the Aegean ward. His plan was to use the level ups he'd get from the Runic Burnout and use them to destroy the Aegean wards on Jarvis's shackles before apparating them both away. He was a bit happy that at least this part of the plan had gone well.

Then everything went to shit.

BOOM!

With an enormous explosive sound that made Moody turn around wild-eyed, the door behind Harry that his foot was still touching exploded outwards and the wards dropped all at once.

Harry had completely misjudged what taking down 11 wards at once would do to him.

Incredibly light headed, Harry dropped to his knees, barely conscious enough to hear Hedwig's worried cries and watch as the mystery man immediately sprinted over to Jarvis with an inhuman speed as soon as Moody's attention was off him, destroying the yellow Aegean ward with a swift wave of his wand along the way, grabbing onto him, and disapparating. Moody's _Stupefies_ and _Diffindoes_ washed off the man as if they did nothing to him.

Ping!

 **Quest Failure!**

 **Rescue Jarvis without giving away your identity!**

 **Failure,**

 **Loss of respect from DMLE**

 **Remain in dark about the one behind the attack**

Just as only the two people were left in the room, a deep cold sensation settled into the air…into their souls…colder than any cold Harry had ever felt.

Moody's head snapped towards the hole that used to be the door, his eyes terribly full of fear, an expression that seemed almost entirely alien on his face. His voice was shaking when he muttered, "What have you _done_?"

With his head slowly starting to clear, Harry turned to look outside.

The ship had stopped moving and the sky was no longer the pleasant blue. Stormy clouds surrounded them as far as the eye could see. In the distance, a large dark building towered above them, and descending from that dark building towards them at an extremely alarming speed was an enormous dark shadow.

'No. Not a shadow,' Harry thought.

He had lit his hands on fire, using up all the excess mana from the wards that were blocking his senses and making him feel light headed. Little by little his senses were returning to him, but even despite that, it took his mind a second to place what he was seeing.

Dementors.

Hundreds of them.

Eyes widening as the realization completely set in, he pulled down every shield he had and turned up Gamer's Mind to its fullest extent, pushing down every single positive emotion he had into oblivion before flooding his own mind shields with mana.

Ping!

 **Ghosting Active!**

With his Ghosting skill making him invisible to the Dementors, he jumped to his feet and dashed out onto the deck, where a dozen or so crew members were lying unconscious.

" _They must have come up to see what the ruckus was and passed out due to the effect of the Dementors,_ " Hedwig said, her voice distressed.

Moody had lit a lot of the deck, including most of the area around them, on fire, probably to discourage the Dementors from getting too close, and was apparating in, grabbing one of the crew at a time and apparating out. A light blue glowing honey badger Patronus prowled around them, growling in the direction of the rapidly approaching Dementors.

He was apparating them to safety, Harry realized.

" **Where are you taking them?!** " he shouted in Moody's direction. Moody was barely managing to stay on his feet, struggling more and more every single time he apparated in. Harry needed to help, or else he wouldn't make it!

Moody shot him a dirty look, before yelling back, "The Diagon! Tom's bar!"

Harry nodded before he sent his mana out, parted the fire and dashed through, grabbing one of the crew before apparating away to the Leaky Cauldron entrance and apparating back instantly, not waiting for Tom to acknowledge him or say anything.

He didn't have the time.

When he popped back into existence on the ship, the immense sea of Dementors had descended fully down to the water level and were gliding along the surface, blotting out the sea between the ship and the island. Hurriedly, Harry grabbed another crew member and disapparated, worriedly noting that Moody was barely managing to stay on his feet. He was going to lose consciousness soon. He knew it.

Sure enough, next time he popped back, Moody was lying amongst the unconscious and his Patronus had disappeared.

" _Let me out!"_ Hedwig said as soon as they saw Moody passed out, _"I'll take the remaining people to the apartment! No one will see me! You focus on protecting them!_ "

"Be careful," Harry said and opened up the seam of his pocket. Hedwig burst out into the open air and let out an encouraging trill before diving down towards the deck, grabbing onto one of the crew, and disappearing in a ball of fire.

Harry surveyed the area in front of him with increasing panic.

The Dementors had reached the ship; one of them had already risen to the deck and heading in the direction of Moody. Steadying himself with a deep breath, Harry activated Iron Fist and dashed forwards, slamming it into the Dementor's chest.

Unlike the Dementor he had beat in the ID, however, this one barely flinched.

Instead, it turned its head side to side, as if it was unsure of what had hit him. Harry, a bit shaken from the lack of reaction, slammed another Iron Fist into its jaw.

Again. No reaction.

It simply looked around, visibly more annoyed this time. Behind them, Hedwig flamed in and carried away the last crew member, leaving only Moody on the ship. Hoping that he was at least making a little dent, he slammed another Iron Fist into the Dementor's gut with all his might, this time setting his hand on fire for good measure.

Before he could pull his fist back this time, however, it caught his hand in a quick grip.

Its other boney hand came up to him, bits of dried skin flaking off into air around them as he felt the space around him a couple of times searchingly before its hand wrapped around his throat. Behind him, he could feel even more Dementors climbing onto the deck. The stress on his extremely low-level Ghosting skill was growing more and more unbearable.

Harry was struggling with all his might, trying to use Gamer's Mind to push away his fear, but he was no match for a _hundred_ Dementors. He was close to cracking. He could feel it.

As the Dementor's hand grew tighter around him, Harry's heart started beating faster and faster despite Gamer's Mind, and then suddenly, it skipped a beat. A ping sounded in his ears.

Ping!

 **Ghosting Failure!**

Harry's eyes widened.

'No! Not now!' he thought. Hedwig, who had flamed back in after depositing the last crew member, worriedly flapped around the Dementor in an attempt to reach Harry and flame him out, but it barely even paid mind to her. It was stronger than the Dementor in the ID, better than it, smarter than it…hungrier than it.

It was in its element. It was in Azkaban.

Harry's mother's screams echoed in his ears again…louder this time…He could feel the Dementor lift him up to its mouth with one hand, lowering its hood with another…there was sucking…

Suddenly, the Dementor was yanked backward and Harry dropped to the floor. He caught sight of something bright and enormous circling him…no…there were two of them. The sense of despair in him was slowly being pushed away, but he was still struggling to pull himself together. He didn't have the time to make sense of it. He felt a soft hand on his shoulder and before he knew it, he was being apparated away.

Harry reappeared on a rocky surface.

For the longest of whiles, all that he could make sense of was a female voice…Perenelle…asking him, "Are you alright?" and Nicholas explaining that obfuscating wards around the Azkaban waters and the sudden storm clouds had delayed them from catching up to the ship and that they had come as soon as they had felt the wards go down.

He wasn't all there, but he remembered reassuring them that it was alright.

His legs were too shaky to stand up, but a few moments later, his eyes focused enough for him to see the sight before him.

Shaking slightly as he put weight on his legs, he stood up beside the limp unconscious body of Alastor Moody, wincing a bit as Hedwig flapped down onto his shoulder; she must have rescued the old Auror after all; and his guardians behind him.

"I suppose you were right," he commented with a chuckle, his voice hoarse, "Your Patroni aren't discreet in any sense of the word."

They were standing on a small rocky island about half a kilometer from where the ship had stopped with a glowing ward surrounding them that shielded them from the Dementors' sight. In the distance, two enormous Dragon Patroni; one Hebridean Black and one Welsh Green; flew around the burning remains of H.M.S. Charon as it sank into the rocky sea, battling the swarm of Dementors that were swarming it.

Beyond that towered the dark silhouette of the Prison of Azkaban.

* * *

Markus Black popped back into existence in a small, battered-looking living room of an abandoned house and walked over to a half-standing sofa and repaired it with a quick spell before laying the shivering Jarvis Thompson onto it and conjuring a small blanket before wrapping it around him.

"A-ar-are you going to k-kill me?" the shivering boy asked, his eyes wide with fear.

Markus did not reply, instead leveling his wand at the boy and muttering a simple warming charm. Jarvis visibly relaxed, but still eyed him with suspicious eyes.

He didn't blame him.

With a sigh, he cast a Muffling charm around the room and leveled the Elder Wand at the boy's forehead, watching as his eyes widened and he started shaking again.

"P-please. I didn't do anything. P-please don't h-hurt me."

"I'm sorry Jarvis," he said, a tinge of regret leaking into his voice, "But this may hurt. _Obliviatus Obscura Revealus!_ "

The boy screamed as the memory-repairing charm went to work under the expert guidance of the Elder Wand carrying out its master's orders, stitching back together thoughts and memories that his own Obliviate had dissolved into nothingness. Due to the legendary wand casting the spell, the boy's recollection of all that had happened would be perfect to the tiniest detail, but as an auxiliary effect, the pain would also strike him tenfold.

Jarvis's screams lasted for a good fifteen more minutes and he didn't stop convulsing uncontrollably for the next thirty. When he finally stopped shaking and felt strong enough to sit up, Markus was sitting on a rickety wooden chair in front of him with a bowl of soup, which he handed to him.

With a hoarse, shaky voice, Jarvis asked, "Did I hurt anyone permanently while I was not…you know…while I didn't remember everything? Or worse?"

"No."

"That…is a relief. So tell me, did the distraction work? Did you get what you needed from the Ministry?"

Markus nodded.

"Good. That's good. I was worried I'd done all this for nothing," Jarvis said, chuckling slightly.

Markus didn't share his humorous demeanor. After a moment of silence, apologetically, he said, "I'm sorry you couldn't get to see your mother. I had hoped that after all the hubbub you kicked up in the Alley, she would see fit to handle such a high profile case personally, but apparently, I hoped wrong. I miscalculated and I am sorry."

"It's alright Markus," Jarvis said before pausing to sip on a spoonful of soup, "I saw her a couple of times…I couldn't recognize her then because you had my memories locked away, but…she seemed nice…kind…"

Markus nodded, "She is that. Selfless too. She was forced to abandon you due to societal norms and so that she could keep her job, but she has spent her life climbing up the DMLE ranks to the very top, trying to do good, and help people. I've known that since I met her for the first time in my Fifth Year at Hogwarts and I wanted you to see that too."

There was a moment of silence broken only by the crackling of the fire.

"And my father?" Jarvis asked, "You knew him too?"

"I did," Markus said with a smile, "He was one of the best men I ever knew, if in retrospect a bit loopy. He would give his life for those he loved. Unfortunately, he never knew you existed. I'd hoped that had you made it to Azkaban, you would've been able to see him for a bit before I rescued you, but…"

"But what?"

"I learned mid-way through your transfer that apparently he had found a way to escape from the prison some time ago. It…shouldn't have happened. Caught me off guard. I didn't manage to track him down," Markus said, sounding incredibly troubled, "I tried my best, Jarvis, I promise I did."

Jarvis smiled, before reaching out with a shivering hand and patting Markus's back and saying, "Your best is enough. Besides, I think it's time I let go of this grudge against my parents. They seem like they were good people. I… I suppose that it's best for me to move on."

Markus could almost physically feel a weight lift off his chest.

Grabbing the empty bowl of soup out of Jarvis's hands and setting it onto the floor, he grabbed a file off the nearby table and handed it to Jarvis, who gave him a questioning look.

"Ms. Bathilda Bagshot from the wizarding village of Godric's Hollow is an old lady with no other family. She has taken in many foster children throughout her life; both squib and wizards; throughout her life, but she lives alone now."

Jarvis started to interrupt but Markus held up a hand, asking him to wait.

"She was reluctant to take you in, especially because I was a complete stranger who showed up begging her to take in a child she knew nothing about, but once I talked to her over a cup of tea and explained your parentage to her she agreed to keep it a secret and give you a place to live till you are eighteen."

The young boy seemed stunned into silence, so Markus continued speaking.

"She is a nice lady and she'll take good care of you. If you are willing to listen, she will have many stories to tell. Once you are eighteen, you'll be able to access the account I have set up for you in the Bank of London. It has enough funds to give you a good start on whatever life you choose to have. I haven't forgotten my promise either, Jarvis. I _will_ find a way to help you meet your father. I promise. But until then, I hope tha-"

He was cut off as Jarvis leaped out of his seat and grabbed him in a tight hug, his body shaking with sobs. Markus could do little but hug back.

It took Jarvis a while to get his bearings back, but once he did, Markus handed him the Portkey and the documentation that he would require upon reaching his destination, patting him on the back one last time as he said his goodbyes and thanked him. The young boy had taken a huge risk and endured a lot for him and while Markus knew he didn't deserve such loyalty, he appreciated it incredibly.

With a soft whoosh and a burst of color, the Portkey carried him away to his new home.

Markus walked over to the right of the room and stared out of the window of his childhood home into the streets of Godric's Hollow. While Jarvis's new home wasn't too far away from The Potter Cottage, but it was for the best that he didn't know where Markus had been lodging for the last few days.

In the future, Jarvis Thompson's dark life as a revenge-obsessed wizard killer and then his eventual suicide had weighed heavy on Markus, especially after he had discovered who his parents were. Redirecting his life into a better direction wasn't a huge change to the timeline, but it was something Markus was proud of nonetheless.

Besides, it wasn't as if he had been entirely selfless. He had been on his own mission while Jarvis had been out laying waste to the Alley.

That mission had been incredibly successful.

The diversion at the Alley had, despite having gotten slightly out of control, worked, and he had been able to break into the most secure wing of the Department of Mysteries and steal the item he had needed to acquire. A bracelet that not only blocked Scrying, Spying, and Divination magic but also produced false results that gave him near-complete anonymity. He wouldn't have been able to step foot near Dumbledore without raising a dozen red flags without it, so acquiring it was a great leap forward towards his overall goal.

Despite the good news, however, he had also realized that he had suffered from an incredible setback.

He had come back in time hoping that he could use his knowledge of the past to prevent the dire fate that awaited them in the future, but apparently, he wasn't the only one who was intent on changing the flow of Fate.

There had been changes…modifications…events that didn't line up…

Higher forces had been meddling with the timeline in ways that it shouldn't have been meddled with, creating unforeseen situations for him that made all his foreknowledge useless. Someone else had been messing with the past and they had a managed to score a hell of a head start on him.

His eyes drifted down to his ring finger, upon which rested a golden ring that held a small dark gemstone. The triangular mark set deep into the stone glinted in and out of sight, barely visible in the dim light.

It was time to go have a chat with an old friend.

* * *

 **I'd love to hear your thoughts on the port and the end scene with future Harry and Jarvis. The chapter was very experimental. New locations. New characters. New reveals. New setups. I'm very curious to hear your thoughts.**

 **Next chapter will be Harry and co. visiting the French version of Diagon Alley. If you have any ideas for shops, magical items, traditions, easter eggs, references, or characters that you'd like me to put in, let me know. I'll try my best to put them in as worldbuilding details and fill out the new locations with lots of details and quirks as I always try to do.**


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